Violet Era: Metallix
by Therix
Summary: No rest for the wicked; even with the ordeal of Moebius behind them, heroes can never rest. Denied their greatest mind, the Freedom Fighters must combat a threat source to the most unlikely place, and then faciliated by someone far more infamous. Third arc in the Violet Era series. Rated M for violence and suggested adult themes.
1. Chaos i

"We got lucky that time. It won't work again." Tails told them, incapacitated as he was. The moment that the Echidna authorities had been aware of his presence and current state, they had mobilised specialised medical staff and, at the request of Knuckles the Guardian, who's position had no official ranking but plenty of influence, a contingent of the Relentless Guard. There had been plenty of speculation as to why the most powerful chaos adept on record had been unable to heal himself, but after his condition had been stabilised, he had been free to explain, and he was doing so again.  
"The difference is fundamental." He told the others, though most of his attention was directed at Rotor, the one most equipped mentally to understand what he was talking about. "Chaos energy and Anarchy energy are two opposites, equals and opposites for different dimensions. Our bodies aren't meant to be able to withstand Anarchy energy, and thus start to break down. It's what causes Anarchy poisoning." He paused for a moment, examining the fluid drip on his arm.

"However, when Anarchy energy enters the body, because we cannot pass it through, it stays there. It sticks in the body and causes the decomposition. While we remained on Moebius, we were all slowly taking in this background Anarchy radiation and not giving it out, and our bodies broke down because of it. The moment you got back here, the situation was reversed. Instead of the Anarchy energy being the controlling medium, and eliminating the incompatible energy form, in this case Chaos energy, it was reversed. Even now Chaos energy is slowly breaking down the damaging energy within all of us and our bodies are healing along with it. There's no way to accelerate the process, and I can't heal the areas that are still affected, and neither can any of you. As a result, I expect I will be hospitalised for some time. A few weeks at least. I'm going to be out of the team, and so will Fiona, for a while. You haven't seen her yet, and while her injuries are not inflicted by the same source as mine, they are just as severe."

"Yea, I saw what happened before I left." Sonic nodded. His usual casual, cocky demeanour had been brushed aside by concern. "You both going to be alright?"

"I can tell you I will be. My damage is largely superficial due to the nature of the injury, I'll heal over time. Fiona's situation is different. She had a plasma charge detonate while she was caught in the edge of the blast. I was in super form at the time, I could take the damage and use the energy, but she took it a lot worse. Most of her is burn marks and the shockwave broke a few ribs. That's the damage that I know of. A stasis tube prevented the damage from getting any worse, but at the minute I don't know. I've asked the doctors to tell me when they've got a better idea." He tilted his head to the side in something like shame. "I got her back to Mobius, at least."

"I was going to ask." Knuckles tapped the side of the bed. "How did you get back? I'm not a scientist, but I know about chaos mechanics. To jump a dimension you'd need a portal, and I know from experience that a stable portal, even in the same dimension needs two ends to be linked by familiar power sources. Chaos energy is unreliable like that. You never told me how you got out."

"I didn't want to have to tell the story twice, so I wanted to wait for everyone to be here." He looked around the room, small and clean and smelling of anaesthetic. "And we all are, except Lupin, and I have it on good authority that he's not coming back. It's simple, really. Miles must have had a way to get through to Mobius, and a way to focus it to end up where he wanted to be. We found the technology he used. I couldn't read Moebian, nor did I have the strength to learn to do so, so I activated the device and set us through. It's blind luck I ended up on Angel Island. And before you say…that's why we took the Anarchy beryl with us. A power source." He looked at all of them in turn. "I told you I wouldn't die in there, and neither would Amy or Fiona."

"Speaking of which…" Nicole cut in. "Tails, I need to have a word with you, in private. I'm not waiting any longer."

"Fine. I think I know what this is about, but fine. The rest of you wait outside." Tails flicked his hand feebly, the others filing out the room all manner of things on their mind. In the hallway, Knuckles spoke up again.

"I should probably go. I've got an emerald to protect, and the council don't like me hanging around in the city too long."

"What's their beef with you?" Sonic asked him, leaning on the wall.

"I'm worth a lot. I don't have any real authority, since guarding a mystical gem is generally regarded as a traditional post now. Thing is, the rest of the population feel differently about it, and they take my word in stronger hold than that of the council. They don't like me taking the spotlight, and they can make some real trouble for the priests if I hang around too long. I should probably get back to that mystical gem before they start pestering me about public disturbance."

"You? Disturbing the public? Knux, that's my job!" Sonic coughed at him, stifling a chuckle. As the Echidna began to walk away, he followed the laugh and agreed with the hedgehog.

"I'll tell them when I see them!" he called back as he pushed open the doors. "One of you guys pay me a visit when the guy gets better!" then they were out of his sight, the door swinging shut behind him, medical staff passing down white-lit corridors. This wing of the hospital was quiet, reserved for the patients who were in the worst state, the most contagious, or those with the most money. Tails and Fiona were priority cases, Fiona by virtue of her state, and Tails both because of his current condition, and because he owned MilesCorp.

It's also very hard to refuse an Echidna chaos adept brandishing his fists at anyone who disagrees withhim. Tails likely would have gotten into the isolated ward anyway, Knuckles had just made sure of it. As he reached the end of the ward, he flagged down one of the doctors. "Hey." He said, "get a message to me when Mr Prower is recovered."

"We don't run a postal service, Guardian." The Doctor replied stiffly. He knew Knuckles when he saw him – everyone did.

"I don't really care. Get a message out somehow, or tell him to contact me when he's recovered, or something, just make sure I find out – I've got to go." He brushed the man aside, pushing yet another door open and passing into the next corridor to let the door shut. He made his way out, following the signs for half of it and using his memory for the rest, until he was back on the streets.

Ignoring the calls of fellow Echidnae, he made for the city limits. He didn't like leaving the Master Emerald, even with Tikal there watching, and he had yet to get used to the popularity that seemed to follow him into the civilised areas of the island.

He paused to talk to a few of those who were his friends, paying a visit to those few who actually knew anything about him aside his name, those who had aided him in past scuffles over the emerald, but there was no need for food or any sleep or rest, he made sure debts were settled then left the city, carving his path through the island forestry without pause.

Fatigue and sustenance were two things the guardian no longer needed. As guardian of the Master Emerald his connection was with chaos, and as chaos was drawn from everything, he was empowered by everything. His body was constantly fuelled by an unending source of chaos energy which was also the same bond to the Master Emerald. Yet another thing that served to remind him how different and alone he was.

His path took him through a pass between the mountains, the only way to the centre of the island without traversing avalanches, cliff faces, scree slopes and all manner of other natural perils. It was by far easier to take the low path through the pass, and since he was the only one meant to go this way, it suited Knuckles just fine. It was evening by the time, a golden sunset cresting the mountains, when he finally returned to the shrine.  
To all intents and purposes, the shrine was held on a separate island of rock floating directly in the middle of nothingness, surrounded by jungle, rocks and grass, a bridge the only connection between it and the rest of the island, a bridge so old that it was near-impossible to believe it still supported the weight of hundreds so easily. He paused at the edge, looking at the shrine.

It was nothing as it had been hundreds of years ago, now a monument, holding the island up but without any security besides one lonely abrasive Echidna.

An octagonal edifice with wide stone steps on one side, the emerald itself, a giant gemstone sitting at the top, rotating slowly, a single figure perched on the edge of the steps, inspecting her nails carefully.

"How is he?" Tikal asked, when Knuckles had finally broken his reverie and ascended the steps. Tikal the Echidna was a rare breed, peach-coloured skin and a very tribal-looking dress, she was another relic from the past, preserved within the Master Emerald for uncounted years to serve as the other side to chaos.

"He'll live, but they're worried about Fiona. She's in bade shape." He slumped down next to her.

"She'll pull through, I think. I've never met her, but I've seen through Tails' eyes. They were hidden from me during their…adventure…but I saw her when they returned, and she'll make it."

"You can tell that?"

"I had a lot of time, and I've seen through many eyes during my time, Knuckles. I know some things about medicine, some techniques are a little rustic, but anatomy hasn't changed. It's still a guess, but I'm confident."

"That's good to know, I guess. How long have you got before you have to go back in?" Knuckles nodded towards the emerald.

"Actually…" she sighed, "there's another reason for me being out here. I'm not entirely sure why, but it coincided with this as a useful coincidence. No, I have a little time before I return to the emerald, because I've got a message to deliver." She leaned back, casting a figure that Knuckles found remarkable to say the least. Even over hundreds of years, Tikal had aged body and mind. Her body was in its early twenties, the aging effect delayed by her spirit being transformed into chaos energy, while her mind was several hundred years old.

"What is it?"

She patted a roll of paper next to her. "I've got to give this to someone, but It's not somewhere I can just walk in. I'll need you to come with me."  
"Wh- what? What happened to guarding the Emerald?" he punched the ground. "Do you want to get it stolen?" Knuckles was often reminded of the age similarity – he had guarded the Emerald for a lifetime he was sure wasn't natural, but he also was constantly told of her personality, hard to supress and often impetuous.

"It won't get stolen." She didn't look up, just started examining the backs of her hands for imperfections. "The only one stupid enough to try is Robotnik, and he's not going to be able to try anything."

"And why's that?"

"Because he's the one we're going to see."

* * *

Dr Ivo Robotnik, also known 'affectionately' as Dr Eggman by the younger portion of Mobians, evil genius and Doctor who made robots, various war engines and it seemed to be stoically fixed in the mind of Sonic the hedgehog that the man could build his empire on his ego. That was the man they were going to see, a man who had spent the greater chunk of his life attempting to bring the Mobian population of the planet to its knees.

It was a source of both amazement and chagrin, both in constant measure, to the Doctor that not one of his attempts had ever worked, at least, not to completion. There was always some factor, some unseen variable that he didn't take into account that the Freedom Fighters or whatever ragtag band he was fighting at the time would take advantage of, most recently of course it had been Knuckles, on Angel Island. Everything had been going perfectly. He had set up the siphoning technology, tested it so he knew it would absorb chaos energy, and aligned it with the Master Emerald. The Freedom Fighters had been tied up fighting along with the rest of those who could be any real threat, and he had been reasonably confident he could siphon off enough energy to power his last resort if anyone got too close before his escape.

He hadn't counted on Knuckles leaving the Emerald's side to walk halfway across the island, through most of his defences and into the control room, just to stop him. Things had been going especially well – even the guardian had been having trouble, until he had tapped into chaos energies far beyond anything that Robotnik had prepared for. He hadn't counted on Hyper Knuckles, though the guardian had left once there was little remaining of the control room, and Robotnik was battered, but alive. He regarded it as a saving grace, but he had yet to work out why the guardian hadn't just killed him there and then.

It didn't matter – he was alive, and he still had his technology. That was the important thing in all this. His attempt had failed, but…he had others. While he lived, he could focus on winning and staying alive. When he was dead, there wasn't much he could do about it. It would help, of course, if he could find the plans.

"maybe you should check the first chambers again?" His assistant and nephew asked, watching Robotnik's ire and carefully avoiding his gaze.

"What good with that do?" the taller of the two snapped.

"Well, it has been a while since you searched for this _particular_ stratagem, perhaps it was filed differently."

Robotnik straightened to his full height, drawing his full, imposing figure up in front of his nephew. A tall, rotund man, he looked every inch the classic inept villain, but he was no. His limbs were spindly compared to the rest of him, the product of spending his life in a chair while robotic minions did the work, and thus most of him was bionic. Most of his skin was still there, but nerves, muscles and bone had been replaced with wires, fibre and titanium, providing him with a strength and speed that belied such a mismatched frame.

His right arm, a skeletal robotic limb, the only part of him that was quite obviously mechanical, landed on his nephew's shoulder, the needs in the nails digging into his clothes.

"Now, Colin." He explained in a deep voice, his massive handlebar moustache bouncing as he spoke, spoiling the effect slightly. "My instructions have always been to make the transfer exact, so that things are filed just as they were originally. You know how irritated I would be were those orders to be disobeyed. I'm going back to the control room, you keep looking, and if you find anything that is filed…improperly…make sure it is corrected promptly, will you?"

It was a simple command, but the threat lying behind it was quite clear. Colin Robotnik was quite sure that Ivo would not kill him, but he could make his life very uncomfortable for an indefinite length of time, such was his sadistic streak.

"Yes, I'll see you later, uncle." He sniffed, keeping his head dipped subserviently, waiting until the pressure was off him.

"Good. You've been an honour to the family name, Colin. Don't sully that reputation." Then then the shadow moved away, along with the grinding pain in his shoulder as the skeletal arm released its grip. He didn't move until he doors slid shut with a hiss behind him, and he was free to fully enunciate his thoughts. He did so, muttering the many and varied curses he could think of under his breath.

"I hope I get to see the moment those vile creatures finally see the end of you." He added once his tirade had finished, "It will be nice not to keep having shoulder joints replaced."

He resumed his search.

* * *

Knuckles could only think of one explanation; after all that time, Tikal had gone mad. She knew that his job was to protect the master emerald, and walking right into Robotnik's home would present an opening that the tyrant could easily exploit. He couldn't leave the Emerald's side if Tikal was about to go into that hell, and he couldn't allow her to go alone…bloody hell, another problem.

"You're crazy." He protested, as she made preparations to leave.

"No, I'm not. My actions in the near future will determine countless lives, and if I remain here in the emerald then many of those lives will be lost, and many more ruined. This message must reach Robotnik within two days, or we will all pay the price for it."

"I can't let you go. It would be neglecting my duties as guardian."

"No, Knuckles." She looked over at him. "You can't let me go _alone._ As I said, you're coming with me."

"And leave the emerald unguarded?" he snapped, waving his arms in protest. "I went to see Tails because you were here while I was away, but there won't be anyone to watch it while I'm away if you're with me."

"No-one will come after the emerald. I know they won't, Knuckles. We're not the only guardians."

"What? Since when?"

"This message had to come from someone, and you know I don't take orders from anyone other than the controller. This message was given to me by Chaos, this message is from him, and he's not going to let the emerald disappear while we're gone. We're going to deliver this message and then return, and while we're gone, he won't let anything happen to it."

"Why should I trust the epitome of madness and disorder? Why should you, for that matter?"

"It's only called Chaos because when it was first discovered, that's what everyone thought it was. It's just energy, Knuckles. Chaos is tied to the master emerald even more than you are." She put down the bag she was sorting through to look over at him and take his hand. "It's his heart, if you will. He won't let anything happen to the very thing that allows him to live. Come on big red, you can't think they'd entrust the safety of the entire island to one Echidna, do you? Chaos and I are sort of…backup. Well, I am, at least. Chaos is the sentience formed from the coalescence of chaos energy and given form and desire by that same method. But he won't let his heart die."

She leant forward, running her hand up his arm and whispering into his ear. "I _really_ don't want to have to suppress your will for this Knuckles, 'cause…I kinda like you, but this isn't my choice either. I'm going, and you're coming with me, whether you like it or not."

The red guardian shivered in a mix of surprise, anxiety and…pleasure? Happiness? Something like that. "Ok, since when can Chaos control himself, since when can you suppress willpower and _since when have you felt anything more than a grudging friendship towards me?"_

She sighed, staring at her feet and brushing hair from her eyes. Chaos has always been able to control himself, he just…doesn't like people killing Chao, or destroying the emerald. I've been able to supress willpower since I entered the emerald, but I only realised it in the last century or so. As for that last bit…" she had almost heard the italics in his voice. "…It's been that way for a while, but while trapped in a green glowing rock in the middle of nowhere with only an abrasive Echidna and water monster, you don't get much in the way of social skills. Come on Knuckles, I was trapped only a few years before you became guardian, and it's been eight hundred years now. We age at only a fraction of the speed of the rest of the world, and you're the only one in the same situation, and you're a likeable guy if you look past the fists."

"I don't hit everyone that shows up!" He vehemently protested, breaking away from her and striding to the edge of the shrine.

"Just most of them? Knuckles, tourists aren't inclined to try and hide the master emerald in their overnight bags. Now, stop changing the subject.

That's not what I'm faulting – for all this time I've put it down to you doing your job. So, what do you think? It's not as if you're busy for a bit. Why not think of this as a date?"

"E- Excuse me?" the guardian's fists dropped along with his jaw as he processed all of it. He went immobile for a moment, facing away from Tikal.  
"A date. Something wrong with that? Come on, is there a problem? Knuckles, I'm joking! Eight hundred years and I'm not allowed a joke? We can go for dinner afterwards."

"Will you stop that? I'm trying to take my job seriously!"

"I'm not stopping you from doing your job. If anything, this will make you defend the emerald with further vigour." She leant against his back, and the male Echidna began to sweat as he became quite aware of her bust pressing against his shoulder blades. Knuckles was fully aware that he had gone a long time without a girlfriend, or any partner of sorts, and she was offering him one, effectively living in the same space already, a common goal…why was he even thinking about this? He was the guardian, he shouldn't be going on flights of fancy like this!

"Tikal- no!"

"Knuckles, the reason you're saying this is because you're socially inept. You haven't had the even brief benefit of seeing the outside world like I have. You don't even know what it would be like, do you?"

"Of course not!"

"Well then, there you go." She smiled, pushing herself off him and starting to pace. "Tell you what, since you're going on this little excursion whether you like it or not, you can use the time to think about my offer. That gives you quite a while to make your choice, and maybe I can convince you on the way. You don't have to give any definite answer until we get back, alright?"

"Fine." He admitted at length, "but don't expect a change in my first answer. I won't have much time to think either, if we're really going where you say." He turned to face her. "I'll be spending most of my time busting metal, so I'm probably going to be thinking where next to put my fists, not my relationship problems."

"Well, take a bit of time to think it over. I'm going to want an answer when we get back no matter how much you've procrastinated about thinking about it."

"You're really determined to go out with me, aren't you?" Knuckles answered curiously.

She flashed him a sly grin. "Well of course, if I wasn't determined then I'd be a crap guardian, wouldn't I?"

* * *

**A/N: This is the first chapter of Metallix, but you should all be warned that at the time of writing, the story is not complete, so updates will be a lot less frequent.**


	2. Chaos ii

As she had predicted, Knuckles had gone along with her. Eight hundred years was a wonderful amount of time to work on your persuasion, especially since she was trying to work on the only guy she ever had a chance with. It wasn't like she'd find another person who would be willing to trek out into the middle of nowhere to see her, or defend her for an eternity. Ok true, it wasn't exactly his choice, but it was basically the same as marriage.

Two people forced together against their wills and having to live in the same drab place for the rest of their lives.

"So, I was thinking dinner first…" Tikal prompted to the guardian, nudging him in the ribs.

"It's not a date!" Knuckles protested for what seemed like the umpteenth time, and they had yet to leave Angel Island.

"It basically is, you know." She told him matter-of-factly, privately enjoying his floundering. She would have preferred to do it publically, where the joke could be enjoyed by others, but this would have to do, trudging through the forest at the pace she set, trying to convince Knuckles that dating her wouldn't be as big a drama as he was making it out to be.

"How is this in any way a date of any kind? I've been railroaded into coming with you because you're a part of the emerald! You're the only one who is under any such delusion!"

Tikal winced. That had hurt, but she wouldn't let it show. "Yea, so it's just like a date." She laughed it off.

All Knuckles could do was sigh and go along with it. He wasn't the type who could win an argument without his fists, and he knew it. Tikal could keep going for ages, but in the end his repertoire was very bland and repetitive when it came to what he could say in this regard. It wasn't as if his job had allowed for a great deal of people skills. He punched anyone who came too close to the emerald – not really much talking to be done. He had learnt a while ago not to listen to goads and taunts from a challenger, just to knock them down as quickly and as forcefully as he could.

"Alright, let's just get this over with. You're enjoying this, and I'm not. I just want to drop in, drop this damn message off and get back to the emerald. I don't care if they're sacred messages from Chaos himself, I just want this whole thing over and done with."

Again, it stung. Tikal then realised that she really did want to be going out with Knuckles, and this constant humiliation wasn't the way to go. The guardian was straightforward, a very obvious person. He understood playful taunts, to an extent, but couldn't stand them if they went on too long, or were directed at more sensitive topics.

"Ok, Knuckles, sorry." Tikal breathed heavily, rethinking her entire plan. "I get you want to get back to the emerald, but I don't understand why you're protesting so much. Will you at least think about it? It would mean a lot to me if you did." For a few moments Tikal was a shy teenager, knees together and hands behind her back, staring at the ground.

"Ugh…fine, whatever. Just…don't pester me about it. You wanted me to guard you for this, that's what I'll do. You point, I'll hit it. Let me mull it over when we're back home."

"Sure!" she nodded, markedly happier than she had been moments ago, now she was back on track. "Now, Chaos told me that we'd have transport waiting for us in Deepmire Quarry…"

* * *

Deepmire Quarry, one of the few places on the whole of Mobius where Ivo Robotnik had managed to found a base and not get removed from it swiftly and forcefully. It had been formed naturally overtime, on the edge of the island where wind eroded the rock into oddly-shaped caverns and cliffs. The base was suspended from the rock within these alcoves and shelters, a massive wall of steel that blasted anything flying by with reflected sunlight, and lasers of course.

"Ok, I have two questions. First, why does Chaos think we can get transport here, and second, why are we sneaking around like this?" Knuckles complained from his position in the undergrowth, peering over the edge of the island. Tikal lay concealed next to him, her chaos powers generating an aura which made them simply blend in with the natural chaos radiation, effectively blocking them from sensors.

"I think Chaos is assuming we have the initiative to steal one of the ships, or at least stow away on one. Robotnik has constant travel between his bases for his legions, and those airships…" she pointed to a row of metal balloons with massive crates suspended below them, "…those airships should get us straight to him."

"And now, why are we sneaking around?"

"Because, Knuckles, while you are confident about ripping your way through this place, you're not in hyper form and the military hasn't dislodged this place yet. If we want to do this, we need to do it quietly."

"I don't want to-"

"I'm well aware of that." She hissed. "But you want me to get back to the emerald without dying, so we do this my way. You said you'd follow my lead, so follow, now move!" she gave him a hurried shove and started crawling through the grass and moss, aware of her diminishing cover as she neared the edge of the island. The wind was picking up too – that was another problem; the circumference-drift. The edge of the island generated some very violent turbulence, and thus most of the ships and troops sent to dislodge Robotnik found themselves at a disadvantage against the robotic legions, whose auto-aim allowed them to compensate for the drift.

It was for this that Tikal insisted on stealth. She knew that up close, Knuckles could match and beat almost anything Robotnik had in store for him, but fighting on a narrow walkway while battered by the wind would be a problem even for him, and the patrols could draw a bead and take him out before he got close. If he could at least restrain himself until they got within a good range, then she could cut him loose and let him go to work. The female Echidna hoped it wouldn't come to that, but having a backup plan couldn't hurt.

"So, what's your plan then?"

"Well, at the minute I'm using chaos energy to make us blend in with background radiation. With another subtle shift, I should be able to make us invisible to their optics. If I do it right, we should be able to just walk in."

"So, if you could do this so easily, why didn't you just up and leave before I returned?"

"Because I need the energy. This takes a lot of strength, Knuckles, and I'm going to need yours. I'll be channelling it, and you'll need to be supplying me with energy from the emerald. Otherwise I'll tire of it in moments."

"So…how do I do that?"

"Well, you know when you use chaos ram you direct your energy to your fists? Well, from there, instead of asking for the attack, just let it go. Let it flow into the next source – and yes, this does mean you're going to have to hold my hand."

The guardian huffed. "Fine, alright then." She felt behind her until he took her hand, the glove designed for boxing and awkwardly-shaped, and then she put her plan into action.

Technology existed for this of course, the refraction or reflection of light around an object, but such technology left heat and electrical signatures, which the robots would surely scan for, and the entire method was flawed. Refraction of light involved disturbing it, making it flow in a way that was unnatural. She could not slow light down either, slowed light would generate a disturbance, again. Either of those techniques would have used considerably less energy, but also would have opened them significantly more to attacks, so the technique she would be using expended energy in far greater quantities but the level of protection would be almost absolute.

To put it simply, she intended to make the molecules in both her and Knuckles photophobic. Instead of bouncing off the two Echidnas, the molecules would be repulsed by their very being, weaving between their atoms to get to the other side, thus reflecting no light and thus making them totally invisible. Combined with the chaos shift making them invisible to other sensors, they would practically disappear.

"Alright, go." She told the guardian, placing her spare hand flat against her stomach, and releasing the pent-up energy in her palm. It rippled through her, destructive to anyone who wasn't an adept, her skin and clothing changing as it spread, fading and disappearing, or rather, dodging light, as the ripples spread. It passed from her and along Knuckles, who started at the change but kept a tight grip on her hand. What she had also neglected to tell him was that now it was solely dependent on him. It had used her entire reserves just to trigger the change, and so now he was being used to maintain it, a process that also required a significantly lesser grade of energy.

"Now listen." She whispered, "we're still not blocking sound, and if you let go then both of us will become visible again." Her words came out haltingly, her mind mostly taken up in the effort of holding the power in check, "we can't see ourselves either, so try and think about where you're placing your feet."

"Ok, this isn't what I expected…" he muttered, still trying to understand what exactly was going on – he knew it involved chaos energy, since Tikal had asked him to supply her with the stuff, but he still had no idea _how_ it worked. That wasn't in his branch of work.

"Come on then." Tikal whispered, "and try not to take any pot-shots at passing patrols."

* * *

She counted that as a success. Sure, he had very violently torn off the door to one of the airships and methodically crushed the two squads of assault bots in standby inside, but there hadn't been enough of a disturbance to alert any other squads, thanks to, in no small part, the muffler field she had put up the moment Knuckles had let go. At that moment the invisibility had dropped and she had been able to utilise her skill in other fields, doing her best to deaden the noise the Echidna Guardian was making.

But they were in the air, the airship humming through its steel balloon, and they were on their way to the target. The red Mobian, having reasoned there wasn't anything for him to do until they got to their destination, had fallen asleep, leaving Tikal to her thoughts.

_What are you planning, Chaos? Why Robotnik, and why now?_ she wondered, stroking the dried paper scroll. _You didn't tell me anything._

She leant against the wall as the ship altered direction, tilting as it did so. During transit, the robots magnetised their feet so they wouldn't rock about, but they weren't robots, and it was tiring enough already to keep them off the infra-red that the ship had active.

_You can see everything, so you knew what would happen to Tails, and Fiona, and everyone else, so why interfere like this?_

She had forgotten how tiring all this was – she had been granted a bare few days out of the emerald in over eight hundred years, and each time her lack of physical fitness got to her. She wasn't unfit – quite the opposite; her body was always very athletic in itself whenever it was generated, but a lack of time and practise meant she tired quickly and her strength failed. Holding chaos energy in check required both skill, which she had, and strength, which changed in every incarnation.

That could be another problem – each time she re-entered the emerald, her body was broken down into atoms and then energy, and reabsorbed into the wholeness of chaos energy. Creation of a new body for each return was an extremely stressful procedure, one that could only be completed alongside the infinitely more powerful will of Chaos. The best she had been able to do alone was a pulsing pinkish orb, and the entire time her voice had been revoltingly-whistling and she had been disturbed by the entire experience.

For a moment she almost laughed in the darkness, picturing Chaos as the protective father, shouting at her.

_"Where have you been? Out with that Knuckles rapscallion again? It's extremely difficult to create those bodies you know, you shouldn't be squandering them on so trivial a matter!"_ For some reason she couldn't help but think of him with a rough voice of a businessman. The manifestation of pandemonium wouldn't really object of course, but the thought of it was something to play with.

"Muh-fughbubgle." The guardian murmured as the ship titled once more, sending him sliding over onto his side, the sound of his skull hitting the steel alarmingly loud in the massive space. "We there yet?" He muttered, rubbing his head where he had hit it and pulling himself back upright.  
"Not quite, but I expect we're close." Tikal smiled at him in the darkness, "when we get there you'll have plenty to do, but first, can I ask you something? Hypothetically."

"Yea, go ahead. Now I'm awake I need to pass the time with something."

"What do you think Chaos thinks of me trying to ask you out?"

The ball was in his court. The same topic, but it wasn't directed at him. One point. They were talking about a god. Two points. Still same topic. Minus one point. "Well…" he pushed it around for a moment, "something like this?" he raised both arms, waving them in the air and shouting "garble garble garble!"

It was hardly the most inventive thing, but that was funny.

* * *

The airship docked and opened all hatches just as designated, blissfully unaware that its cargo had been massacred by two four-foot high anthropomorphisms, and remained in dock for the scheduled two hours for unloading and reloading, when in fact it took the two Echidnas a few moments to evacuate the ship and find cover behind a massive cylindrical power generator.

"So when do you want me to start breaking stuff?" Knuckles muttered, his hand on Tikal's shoulder. He had seen her fatigue and lent her some of his strength, though now she only maintained the chaos blanket over them, instead of the full-on invisibility.

"Uh…" her eyes wandered for a moment, darting from the airship, to the power lines and then to the giant generator they sat against. "This thing we're leaning on. Pull a couple of the plates off, will you? Just so we can get to some wiring. There's enough noise to cover you, just don't use chaos power."

"Brute force then." She felt him nod. "You can handle the stealth alone for a moment or so?"

"Yea."

She felt his hand leave her shoulder, then she looked to watch him work. Knuckles was emotionally stunted and socially awkward, but now he was into the physical stuff, the lifting and breaking, this was easy. His gloves served as perfect protection as he levered them in around a plate that wasn't quite flush with the rest of the sheets, a result of sloppy maintenance. A swift tug accompanied by a brief metallic shriek took the panel from the wall, and another two followed before Knuckles finally saw the wires, tight bunches of copper twisting through the solid metal. "Got it." He huffed, a note of professional pride edging his tone as he stepped aside for the girl.

"Alright…" she didn't mess around, just shoved her hand into the breach and crushed the wires she could get her hands on, sending a fairly nondescript burst of chaos energy into it in the process.

"And…why did we do that?"

"Misdirection." She told him calmly, removing her hand and inspecting the burn marks, already healing as her powers did their magic. "If a new legion boards it to get to Angel Island, they'll discover the damaged parts and put the base on alert. If We do things so a generator malfunctions from a random burst of chaos energy, the damage inside will be explained by a chain reaction. Basically, it makes it look like an accident."

Knuckles nodded, impressed.

"Of course, it won't work if those plates aren't back on. You can just stuff the first two in, but make sure the outer one looks right."

"On it. Knuckles pulled the two panels of steel, each easily half a tonne alone, and quite calmly folded them and stuffed them into the hole he had made. Then the final piece he lifted with care, fitting it over the gap and giving each of the corners a good thump. That would have hurt the hands of a normal Mobian – with Knuckles it left a sizeable dent in each corner of the bright red panelling.

"This way then." Tikal hurried him along away from the generator with warning alarms starting to wail at the power failure. Being pushed along, Knuckles found he was beginning to realise why Tikal had been made guardian in the way she had – he and her were different, she fought with her mind, her chaos powers were all about making her more powerful, and over the years, as a chaos construct she had taken in information and used it to further her cause. He was the physical guy, the guy who didn't need explanations, just a target. His way of fighting wasn't with knowledge, it was with his fists; his chaos powers reflected this, all geared towards doing as much damage in the most direct way possible. It made sense she would want to be with him – another of her would be just a pure waste of time, and they both needed someone other than themselves.

_"Two guardians, Knuckles! Two! Two standing side by side with the gods against the world."_

_"Then where's the second one? Sounds like they're late."_

_"You are the second guardian, Knuckles the Echidna. The first guardian already lives amongst us."_

_"Where? Gonna have to point them out."_

_At that the wizened seer had merely smiled, that smile that carried aeons of age and experience and knowledge. "You will know her soon enough."_

'Soon enough' had been roughly six decades. Sixty years to stand silent and unopposed on Angel Island, only speaking infrequently to the Echidna pilgrims and seers. He had met Tikal then. The two had struck at first a working friendship as colleagues-in-arms, then overtime they had developed into true friends, perpetrated by the lack of others. It was quite a real possibility that if they hadn't been guardians, they may never have met.

This situation was new to him. He was using his fists, yea, he could operate those with a fair degree of accuracy, but he wasn't built for stealth. He was clumsy and cack-handed with things, bulky and immovable. He did envy Tikal for that – she was far more lithe and nimble, even with her scarce time as a physical being. Her forms were always a little too slim to be real, her eyes too aged to be as young as she always looked.

He phased out a little, his mind skimming back over the years, recalling everything he remembered about Tikal – seeing her added to about a month in total, maybe less, but they had talked far more often. Now he troubled to recall it, he did admire her, maybe more. He admired her for possessing her own qualities that surpassed his own in those fields, but not trying to perfect herself in every way.

"Alright fisticuffs, you're up." Her voice yanked him out of his reverie like a gunshot. "We've done the stealth, now it's your turn. Break stuff."

The guardian quickly took stock of the situation – he remembered nothing of the hallways and courtyards that Tikal had pushed him through, but now, staring down an as of yet inactive combat legion, this was his element. As he realised what he needed to do, he began to grin, flexing his arms to work the feeling back into them. Hardened and beaten metal, rotary cannons, fusion rifles and explosive rounds, blades longer than he was and optics that could detect things on almost any level. All arranged into squads and then into the legion as a whole within an open courtyard, giant quad-barrelled anti-air batteries and missile defences serving as a safeguard until the robots could be put to better use.

Well, it wasn't like he had flown here illegally, was it? Now it was time to do exactly what he did best – no subterfuge, no tricks or tactics or last-minute strategies, just the blunt force of an Echidna chaos adept charging into a fight.

He broke cover from the edge of the courtyard, trusting Tikal to stay out of sight and to let him deal with things his way now.

As he crossed a certain invisible line, the proximity warning for the nearest clutch of legionnaires activated, basic sensors kicking in and registering the incoming object, identifying it as organic, then as a Mobian. As soon as the command passed through their systems, the entire legion started waking up.

Knuckles had faced these guys before, and he knew what they could do. Now he was within their sensor range, he could see lights winking on them and activation procedures kicking in. He had four seconds until they gained mobility, and then a further two after that until they could start shooting at him. He hit the closest three seconds later, throwing his fists out in front and sending a massive charge of chaos energy into the area in front of him. It appeared in the form of an incandescent shield, running with him, not for defence, but for hitting even harder. He hadn't ever planned to name it, but in a moment of egotistical pride whilst sparring with Sonic he had dubbed it the 'Chaos Ram' as befitted the power it held.

The moment it made contact with the leg of the legionnaire, the energy leading struck out, losing its coherency as part of the shield and returning to its purest state of chaos energy itself. The transition from solid to energy required a massive expenditure of said energy, far out of proportion to the energy that remained. That transitional energy was spent immediately in the form of kinetic energy, which was always a bit of a problem for the first thing it touched.

The legionnaire found his lower body punched at something approaching the speed of sound, and quite simply he ceased to exist.

The shield expended itself quickly, allowing Knuckles the freedom to move in more than one direction as the legion became mobile, one bringing a blade that was almost twice as large as he was down on him in a crushing vertical slash. The Echidna halted in his tracks, powering his right fist up towards it. The blade and glove met and the hardened steel bent away from the force, while the other fist descended over the top. Caught between two forces of equal pressure the blade splintered and came apart under the force.

The legionnaire had less than a moment to comprehend this unfortunate development before his torso was ripped out, one of the rather irritating things that can happen during a fight. Knuckles didn't really care that much – they were robots.

And he was here to fight, after all.


	3. Unit Online i

A close shave…a close shave indeed. It was rare, but even a mad dictator had to sit back and count his blessings. Few as they were; half of his legion had been decimated by a pair of Echidna chaos adepts, a good percentage of his holdings in the forest were on rubble thanks to the same two, but they hadn't come to kill him. No, they hadn't come to kill him.

* * *

_The door splintered – refolded and beaten metal splintered – under the immense power being applied to it. Each slam dislodged pins from the surface and another dent was created, but it could only take so much punishment before caving in and falling to the floor with a loud, echoing clang that rang through the chamber. Even he had to admit, some of his constructions looked squat and ugly, but they had proven before to be effective, and some things just didn't change._

_The door didn't even have the luxury of hitting the ground before a steel-shod boot smashed into it, propelling it like a tank shell over the head of the dictator, the twenty-tonne slab of metal that weighed more than a small truck burying itself in the mass of piping above his head and letting pink, viscous fluid begin to drip down the walls. Later he examined it, and with a sigh of relief found it to merely be one of the many oils he used in his combat units. Now, however, he was far more intent on keeping his eye on the owner of the foot._

_"Well, well, there was no need for such an entrance, old friend." The dictator chuckled nervously, trying to maintain some of his power._

__

"I'm not your friend, Robotnik. That was blackmail before, and you'd do well to show me some respect." Knuckles, having vented his anger on the door, was no less vengeful. His restraint was only a product of the soothing presence of Tikal, following him into the room with significantly less ceremony.

_"Don't worry dear boy; I treat such honoured guests as you with the utmost care." Robotnik smiled, lifting his considerable bulk from his seat, but making no move to approach. Though almost all of his limbs were robotic, they were primarily to support the fleshy bulk of his torso, and he was nowhere near as potent a combatant as Knuckles was – at least, not in these circumstances._

__

The Echidna had not changed since he last met – still as blunt and unyielding as ever.

_"Ivo Robotnik, there's something I need you to hear." Tikal told him before he could continue, or Knuckles could respond to his jibe. "And if you don't listen, I don't think I'll keep trying to restrain my guardian here." She patted the crimson Echidna reassuringly on the shoulder, planting herself between him and Robotnik. "We're not here to kill you, but I don't think Knuckles cares."_

_"You're…Tikal? Correct?" Robotnik coughed out a laugh, his hand coming up to stroke his moustache in a sort of personal ritual. "I think I may have studied your legend when I visited Angel Island a few years ago. Quite fascinating."_

__

"Thank you." The peach-coloured Echidna didn't care what Robotnik thought, really, but she wanted to take full advantage of the situation. He didn't dare move because he knew what she could do, and if he made any move to apprehend her then the fuming guardian behind her would turn him into a bloody mulch leaking into the metal like the oil running down the walls. "But I'd rather make this quick. I'm a terrible boast when it comes to flattery, dear doctor."

_"Of course, of course." He mumbled, still a trifle bemused by this display of…friendship. "What brings you here, then?"_

__

"I've got a message for you." Tikal took a few steps further forward, then threw the bag of scrolls into the space between them. "A present from Chaos. He sends his regards."

_"This day just gets better and better!" The dictator cackled, his old self bringing with it his more jovial side. "A gift from the gods!"_

_"I'm glad you like it. I think you'll find in those scrolls is everything you need for your next attempt on Knothole."_

* * *

She was right, of course. After they had left he hadn't scooped up the scrolls like a lesser man would have done – he called a bomb disposal squad, had the package taken away to decontamination, scanned through six different types of machine, half of which he'd forgotten the use for, and made sure Snively opened it.

Once it had gone through all that without blowing up he finally felt safe enough to look himself – he wasn't paranoid, not at all. He just didn't take anything his enemies said at face value. But as it happened, she was absolutely right. Chaos, through Tikal, had provided him with the means he needed to hit Knothole hard and fast. Something was off about it all – but that was to be expected, considering where the material was being sourced from. Looking at the plans, they held no aspect of it that could go wrong, at least, none that his vast intellect could perceive.

Well, that was why he was sitting at his computer system now, making sure the massive processor couldn't find anything that he had missed. Once again he didn't expect it to – he was superior to it, for he had built it, but a once-over wouldn't hurt.

He put in the data from the scrolls – schematics, in fact – into the computer and watched it take shape in front of him, the design slowly becoming clearer and more solid with each sheet he transcribed.

He made mistakes, minor errors, but a man so sure of himself like Ivo Robotnik did not notice, especially with the overall design looking so…familiar, reminiscent of one of his own designs.

"He's a lot like Neo Metal Sonic, it seems." Robotnik remarked to himself, drawing the design in his head. A skeletal-limbed metal doppelganger of sonic, with bulky gauntlet-like hands and lower legs, a circular body and rounded head. There were a few aesthetic differences, of course – the spikes on the five spikes cresting his head angled backwards, the jet engine on the chest was no longer evident, and there were plenty more spikes.

He could deal with that – more spikes simply meant more weapons.

"My concern is with the power source." He told the computer, muttering ideas to himself as he leafed through the designs. "While Chaos was kind enough to supply me with a chaos drive, he was not quite benevolent enough to supply me with the schematics for it. So I can't attempt to disassemble the drive or there's a good chance it will just blow up and become a tremendous waste of my time." He stopped for a moment, staring into space, then his hand went to a buzzer. He pressed it, holding it down for a few moments then releasing and waiting until Colin came in.

Colin, unlike his uncle, was most definitely _not_ what you would call an evil mastermind. Far shorter than Ivo Robotnik, even in adulthood, so much so he barely outsized the average Mobian, his life had become boiler-fatigues and a worker's cap, tending to the thousands of menial tasks Robotnik could not be bothered to deal with and required the attention of something other than a robot.

Colin Robotnik, the world's least successful villain.

"You called, uncle?" His voice sounded snooty, and had a high, whining tone to it.

"Indeed I did. I'm adding a new project to the list, active immediately, operational within eleven hours. I want it to have a custom name."

Despite his station in life, Colin's eyes lit up at the words. Whenever his uncle named something specifically, it wasn't going on the production line – it was always something more powerful and unique, and a part of him privately enjoyed watching the latest death weapon being unleashed. They never worked, of course, but it was something to see, at least. "What were you thinking of calling it, Uncle?"

Once again Robotnik frowned, scratching his chin thoughtfully. Colin stood expectantly, waiting for a name that would so obviously have something to do with the word 'egg'.

"Call it Metallix." Colin blinked.

"Pardon me, uncle?" He asked.

"Metallix." Robotnik repeated, slowly. "M-E-T-A-L-L-I-X. File it next to M-37.2."

It sent a shiver down Colin's spine – the M-series files, the Metal Sonic files. He had believed those files had been scrapped after Neo Metal Sonic was destroyed on Angel Island. If he was bringing that series back into operation then he was bloody confident about something. That meant work, and no doubt lots of it.

With a sign for things to come, Colin turned and walked from his uncle's room in silence, head down as he tried to decide if seeing the new Metallix design would be worth the work he would be required to put in, and after several corridors of deliberation he decided it wouldn't be. Of course, it never was.

As he pondered this, Colin remembered something he had to do. Abruptly he changed course, returning to the well-trodden route he passed through so often in these halls – unobserved by the many cameras and spy-microphones built into the wall of course, the chip under the skin of his wrist ensured that – leading him to the service stairs that _he_ had had installed, he thought with a hint of professional pride.

He didn't use the elevator as a matter of personal security; every use of that lift was recorded and put on file, and if his uncle discovered a series of trips to the same level on the elevator then he would doubtless get suspicious and come to investigate, and that was something Colin could not allow. The stairs were more tiring, but there weren't cameras and stairs stopped at every floor, so it couldn't be recorded.

His steel-toed boots rattled alarmingly on each step, and his eyes glanced through the dark, the delicate bionics within them buzzing in his mind and cutting away the gloom as if trying to reassure him that he was still alone. When he reached the door to the level he sought, placing his hand on the cold steel he glanced around yet again, cold sweat dripping off his nose. No-one there.

A click and a tap opened the door to level X-6, one of the abandoned levels, decommissioned as Robotnik's base expanded ever higher and wider. Here and there corridors had collapsed under the weight of newer constructions, and others were blocked or strained by massive, jet-black pillars of metal and stone driven through them to be foundations for yet more levels. The perfect place to secrete a few things that Colin did not want his slightly deranged and sadistic uncle to see.

He only used a few small rooms, devoid of security and trusting in their lack of conspicuousness to stay safe, and it wasn't as if he lived down here – though he had prepared for such a possibility, just in case.

Of the four rooms he had partially-refurbished it was the largest of them into which he moved, setting aside the file he had absent-mindedly retrieved on his way. Most of this room was taken up by banks of modular computer panels and data streams, all feeding back to a large tube of amniotic fluid in the centre, the being inside dwarfed by the stuff around it. He stopped at the tube, peering into the liquid and checking the being inside. His eyes flicked over to the panels briefly, the telescopic enhancer magnifying the information for him to see.

"Good, you're still stable." He told the creature, knowing it would not wake, nor hear his words. It was a Robotnik family trait, it seemed, to speak to your subjects. "And you don't belong to that fool upstairs. A bit longer and he'll know what I'm capable of, but let's see how Metallix fares."

* * *

Tails had taken to counting. Anything and everything he could, just so his mind could be distracted both from his lack of action and his concern for Fiona. The tiles on the floor, the fluctuations on his life-signs every minute, even the exact amount of fluid left on the drip. The amount of footsteps he heard over the course of an hour, the seconds it took him to count everything else…_anything._

Even so his fingers drummed the side of the bed incessantly, frustrated and agitated by his lack of power. He had no contact with the outside world, isolated as he was in the secure ward, his body still regenerating damnably slowly as the anarchy energy was slowly burnt from his body by the aura of chaos that saturated Mobius.

The doctors allowed him to walk infrequently, so that his re-growing muscles would not fall lax and lose their strength. Each time they asked him where he would like to go, and he would limp from the room, only saying one word: "Fiona." It had become a daily routine – once, maybe twice a day he was allowed from his room and each time he went to Fiona's bedside, to see her, and watch her recover. She was still unconscious, the trauma from the fight so severe as to have left her incapacitated and unable for the past few days. The stasis rings had done the job, and allowed her to hold on until Doctors could be summoned. On the first day he had been able to walk, he had been unable to hide the pain and sadness in his face at seeing her like this. He may have uttered her name, but he could not remember. One memory eclipsed the other.

As with any other day, the doctor came in to check on his life signs and inspecting the apparatus provided for measuring Anarchy energy – designs deliberated on between Nicole and Tails briefly before being sent off to one of the Echidna manufacturing plants. The two machines in the hospital were being used to monitor the decreasing levels of radiation in both Tails and Fiona, and from what they could tell, Tails' body was purging it far faster than Fiona.

_"I suspect it's because Tails' body is connected more to the chaos force. He receives the energy in greater quantities, so it works faster in him."_ That was Nicole's thesis, and to his chagrin he had to agree. When it came to taking the energy in, non-adepts had it better, but when it came to getting rid of it, you wanted to be an adept.

So, because of that, Fiona's recovery was stunted by the Anarchy energy slowly draining from her, while Tails' was accelerated by his advanced healing and his ability to expunge the energy from himself at an accelerated rate.

When the doctor came in and started inspecting the equipment, Tails had the question once again poised on his lips, and the Doctor knew what he would be asked.

"She's still recovering." The Echidna doctor replied, his voice soothing, a product of years of working with patients, all with different concerns and fears. "The burns still show no sign of infection – in fact, they seemed to have provided a sort of antiseptic. The wounds themselves are being kept sterile, but other than the standard amounts of bacteria we all have, we can't find any sort of harmful virus or infections." He made to move away, and Tails gripped his wrist.

"Has she woken up yet?" His voice sounded neutral, measured, but it was quaking.

"Not yet. We haven't seen any signs of consciousness. It's a good thing, in a way, so she doesn't have to feel the pain she would otherwise. Her neural activity is fine, and we haven't seen any signs of degeneration, but our main concern is cerebrovascular ischemia."

Perhaps, if the doctor had been speaking to a normal patient, the words would have flown over their head, and they would have asked for further clarification. Tails knew what they meant, and it was no less comforting. It was a term for when an infected blood cell reached the brain, and could send the patient into a coma in the best of cases, and kill them at worst. With her exposure to Anarchy energy, Fiona was at an increased risk of having a blood cell mutate from said energy.

"And?" A tinge of dark rage unconsciously crept into Tails' voice.

"Nothing yet. As I said, her neural activity is fine, she's thinking, dreaming maybe. If she contracts CI, then we'd have seen a rapid and massive fluctuation and degeneration. As for her blood, we haven't seen any signs of infection, as we said, but we're monitoring her constantly. She's a top priority patient – the head of the department is personally taking an interest in her case."

Tails finally looked up at the Echidna – it was a male, the voice however was neutral, only bordering a male accentuation and tone. "I hope for his sake that you have worded it wrong." He gripped tighter, his claws digging into the scrubs. "Taking an interest? Taking a damn _interest?_ She's not some bloody puppet to be experimented with. She went through hell and worse to make sure we all made it back alive. Fiona went toe to toe with an anarchy adept to keep her from killing me. It wasn't me who killed the adept, it was her. She got back in one piece because of my stasis rings and her own determination to see things through. If I find that even a single one of you have been neglecting her care so you can study what happens…" He left the sentence hanging.

He released the Doctor. "Get out." He told him, in a tone that brokered no argument. The Echidna left without a word.

"It's my fault…" Tails told the empty room. Nicole had said so.

_"What was it you wanted to tell me?" He asked as she walked in, and sat down on the chair._

_Nicole looked down at the ground before replying, thinking her worlds through extremely carefully. "I want you to remember why you're all like this." She told him, finally, without looking up."_

_"I know why we're like this. Amy-"_

_"It was you, Tails." Nicole snapped. "You splitting up with Amy was justified, but what you did was equivalent to killing her. You made her feel like less than nothing, treated her like an object, or a tool. That's why she left, why she disappeared, because you had thrown her out. Tails...you wanted to know what has Fiona so worried. Why she has been so distant recently. It's you. She's scared of what you'll do to complete your goal. When you ordered her to kill that general during the civil war, in such a cold tone, then you hurt her. She feels as if she is nothing to you, just another tool to be used to accomplish a goal, and nothing more. You're ruthless, you get the job done. You use anything and anyone to do so, and I don't think she wants to feel like she is nothing more than this tool to be utilised. You've been doing this for too long - I'm surprised you needed me to tell you, that you didn't notice it for yourself."_

What was he meant to do?

_"Yea, that's right. It's your fault."_ Umbra growled from within. _"But don't worry, it only shows that you're meant for this. You're a killer, Miles Prower. If you weren't, then I wouldn't be here."_

Tails' hand moved to the buzzer at the side of his bed, and he pressed it once, for a second. When the doctor arrived, a different one to the one that had been there earlier, he looked up at him, and met his gaze with a steely glare. "Take me to Fiona. Now." Like his throat was caked in dust.

"That wouldn't be wise," the doctor began, "overexertion in your current state is unadvisable for your health-" he stopped as he saw Tails start to connect his various monitoring units.

"Staying here would be a lot worse for my mental health." Tails disagreed, "pushing himself past the Echidna and out into the hallway, slumping against the wall along with a wave of nausea. His vision swam and he was reminded of his condition – each visit had been made in a wheelchair, or with some alternative method of support. Now he made the journey alone, waving off the protesting surgeons, nurses and doctors attempting to get in his way. All parted, of course – you never got in the way of a chaos adept, even one that was as injured as Tails.

He pushed over two stacks of medical papers and shoved open several wrong doors in his state before he found the right one, staggering to the chair and sinking into it. Almost immediately when he hit the metal he was relieved of the pain, and his vision began the process of clearing now his brain wasn't largely occupied listening to the hurt all over him.

_"If she felt that way, why didn't she say?"_

_"Weren't you listening? She's terrified of you! She's afraid of what you'll do if she confides in you about anything!"_

_"She didn't seem like this when she was saving my life."_

_"That's because she loves you, Tails. She's been trying for so long to break that shell of yours."_

_"This isn't a shell, this is who I am."_

_"You weren't always like this. You weren't always an emotionless wall, doing what was needed to stay alive. You had feelings."_

_"People change."_ His resolve had begun to waver in Moebius – now he was not so convince of himself.

_"And she wants to change you for the better. Wake up, Tails."_

He reached out his hand, unsteadily taking the edge of the bed rail with his hand, not trusting himself to touch Fiona herself. He didn't want to cause her further pain, and he couldn't see clearly enough, not steady his hand enough to avoid either should he choose to make contact with the small percentage of her that wasn't burnt.

Now he was here, he didn't know what to say. He had to say something – his mind compelled him to, to make amends in some way or shape or form, but he didn't know how.

"Can she hear me?" He asked, not taking his eyes off her. He didn't know if there was anyone in the room, but he didn't care.

"Yes…" He didn't register where the word came from. All he needed was that one word.

"Good, because I can't say this again. Fiona, I'm sorry…no, that's not the right word. That would be me asking for forgiveness…and all I can say is that I deserve this. It took Nicole, Sonic, Amy…everyone to make me say this." He paused, not sure how to continue. "I made a promise that I wouldn't let you die there, and I kept that promise. I got you back home. Felicia is dead and so is Scourge, thanks to you. I didn't have the strength to fight Felicia, and you did. We would have all died but for that. I don't even know what I should be saying…I've been using you as a weapon. I've used everyone as walking, talking, breathing weapons. I've done this to keep us alive, no matter the cost. I promised you that you wouldn't die on Moebius…" He sagged forward, his hand tightening round the steel bars, "Don't die. Don't die here, not now."

He stayed that way for a minute or more, running over and over what he said in his head, finding dozens and dozens of flaws, as if he hadn't been the one that had spoken…until the reality sunk in.

_"Yes."_ who had said that- no.

His eyes opened and slowly he lifted his head, almost dreading what he was about to confront.

He was right, and he resisted the urge to swear.


	4. Unit Online ii

Tails knew who had said it; that voice was unmistakeable. So, while a part of him was glad, another part of him was shaking in terror…and uncertainty. This was the first time he had ever spoken to anyone in this way, and he wasn't sure if he still thought it was a good idea. Did he really want her to hear this confession, or would it have given her the wrong idea?

He was at home on the battlefield, after years of fighting and honing his methods, and it was where he felt comfortable. He could deal with the pain – he had done so before. Some things were more difficult.

He sat there, the bar his hand was clamped around warming slowly the longer he held it, trying to find something, anything that would take his mind of what he had to do next.

He steeled himself, and looked up.

_Thank Nimbus you're alive. I don't know what I would do if you weren't._

"How much did you hear?"

_You don't need to be so nervous._

"Enough. It's all I wanted to hear."

_There's more to say, but do you really want me to?_

"Why did you do it? You almost killed yourself."

_Tails, have you forgotten what I told you? Don't you know what you mean to me?_

"I needed to do something. She would have killed both of us otherwise."

He met Fiona's gaze, his blue eyes locked with the same blue in hers. Within them he found a fierce determination, not dissimilar to his own, but lacking…the malice. Fiona had the will to survive, not the will to kill. There was nothing else in those eyes in that moment. For an instant, there was nothing hiding that determination to keep living on. Then a veil came up over it, something else shadowing it. _Fear._

"Fiona?" Tails raised one eyebrow at her. "What's wrong?" _And since when did I become so good at guessing emotions?_

"Tails…How do I know you're not just going to go back to the way you were before?"

* * *

The primary concern of the remaining Freedom Fighters was not only Tails' health, but what they would do with his absence. With both he and Fiona out of commission, the rest of the team members were well aware of the strain that would be upon them. Fiona's absence was not a great tactical loss; Telera was a competent sniper in her place, and it was a position she could fill easily enough. The key concern was with the void left by Tails.

He had many roles within the team; first and foremost he was one of the leading chaos mechanics on Mobius, and he had an alarming capability to manipulate chaos energy on levels beyond Sonic's ability, and you couldn't get a new chaos adept just like that. Few adepts existed as it was, and none in the capacity that Tails could manage. Then of course there was his phenomenal intelligence, and though Nicole was fairly sure she could fill in for that in some detail, she had admitted that she could only go so far. The limits of her mind did not expand as fast as the young kitsune. Her physical presence was also diminished when she left Knothole; there was only a limited distance that her Legion could operate act while under remote control, and to put herself into a body for the effort would be to put herself at great risk, and she would have to abandon Knothole each time she did so.

Sally was affected the worst. Tails was much like a little brother nowadays, and the damage he had taken for them all was both inspiring and worrying. On top of that she now had to plan around the lack of power he was providing…and she didn't have his tactical genius as support. Tails and Sally were the tacticians of the team, and when they worked together, their plans were invariably works of art.

But in the end, Tails was a strategist, warrior, and mechanic. He was one of the most competent fighters on the team, one of the only strategists, and he had pretty much designed and assembled almost all the gear they used when they fought. Losing him hit the team hard, tactically. They knew he would be back soon, so the loss was not as emotional as the loss of Retis and Lupin, though in the case of the latter many felt that they were better off without him. Nevertheless, all could feel his absence keenly.

So Sally called Rotor.

"I'm sorry, Sally, but I don't know enough about Chaos Theory to do such a thing. I know the process for creating synthetic emeralds, but without a real one the process is significantly slower, and progress beyond that is extremely slow without the fox himself. It will take a while to make even the slightest progress into the field you are suggesting."

"Are there any options open to us? With Tails down Sonic is the sole adept on the team. We need some form of chaos-based weaponry to work in his stead, or at least a way to amplify ring energy."

"Oh?" Rotor paused in his musings. "Ring energy is far easier to manipulate; let me see…" He tapped his pen against the desk as each new idea lined itself up in his head. "Yes, I should be able to put something together in a couple of days, if Nicole can lend a hand. I can't guarantee anything particularly flash, or refined, but I should be able to get something."

"Thank you."

"I have to stress that I can't promise anything particularly decent or reliable. You're asking me to delve into a field that really should take several months of research, through the combined efforts of myself, Tails and Nicole. I'm taking what we know and guessing, Sally."

"I know, I know it's a leap that we can't afford to make, but I don't have any other options at the moment. If there was another way, I'd take it." The squirrel-princess slumped into her seat, feeling both physically and mentally drained by the ordeals that had taken place not a fortnight ago. "It's just until Tails is back."

"With that in mind, I have to go. If you expect me to get anything done, I need to begin immediately."

"Very well. Tell me when you find anything."

"I will." The line went dead, and Sally slumped backwards. "Oh god Tails, do you realise the mess you've left us in?" It was uncharitable of her, she knew, to think of it as his fault, but she need someone to blame, to alleviate the burden on herself. Even with this ring-tech on its way, the team would still be woefully underpowered. No technology could adequately replace a real team member.

She didn't even think of Nicole as a computer anymore; that's how far things had come. Speaking of which…

"Nicole, did you get that?" She asked the room; the whole city of Knothole was blanketed by Nicole's mind, and she was everywhere but a select few rooms reserved for the privacy of a chosen few.

"Yes, I heard. I'm there already." A hard-light hologram of the lynx appeared as another did, simultaneously, within the lab in which Rotor worked. "This is a stretch, even for us."

"I've just had this conversation, Nicole."

"I know. I'm just saying it again. As for the matter of a missing party member, with your consent I can construct a robotic variant of Tails, for the time he's away."

The squirrel's eyes brightened. "You could do that? Would it be chaos powered?"

Nicole shook her head. "No, Tails is the only one who knows how to build safely-constructed chaos-powered technology, and the only examples of that we have are the defensive measures powered by the seventh emerald. We would have to look into the coding and technology surrounding them, then adapt it to this new model. I intend to make it powered by an artificial ring-matrix, and some of the weapon systems would be similar to my own legions."

"It's sound in principle, I take it, but how reliable would it be on the battlefield?"

"Well, I can put into it the basic command structure used in my own legions for independent function, and if you wanted, I could install a rudimentary AI so that it would be self-reliant on the battlefield. Sound good?"

"Do it." Anything to alleviate the pressure. "Permission granted. Just make sure it won't break down halfway through a firefight. I want something I can work with."

"I can do that. Oh, and one more thing. What should I call it?"

Sally frowned. "Well…why not the Tails Mannequin?"

* * *

_"I want answers, now."_

Within the swirling mass of chaos energy that encompassed the globe, it was fraught with personalities, snatches of emotion that too contributed to the global field of energy, conscious minds that appeared and fell apart in the complete anarchy. Within that mass of power, two beings retained their individuality, their uniqueness. One, the god of that realm, the other, his pawn.

_"Tikal, you are to carry out my will in the physical plane. You are not to question my goals; you know the consequence of knowing the future. Once it is set, it cannot be changed."_

_"Then what gives you the right to see it yourself? Surely you know it, it's set in stone for all of us?"_ With no physical body and thus no real voice, Tikal's thoughts were her speech, and there was no voice, merely two minds colliding, hers and the vast intellect of the great god Chaos. His mind was even blanker than hers, unreadable, and as one of the few real gods, he was legend.

_"I am Chaos. My very being lies in the changing nature of things, and so I can see possibilities, not the true future, and so I take steps to influence it, and direct it to a greater end."_

__

"Then what possible purpose does aiding Robotnik-"

_"Silence!"_ With no tone or pitch, the shout of the god felt like a ripple, a wave, smashing through the ether. _"I have answered your question as recognition to your service, but it is not your place to ask why I do as I do. What is done is done, and you cannot change it. The timeline alters as we speak, so you will watch, and see it as it plays out. You will not force answers from me, nor will you ask questions above your stations. You, like the second guardian, are tools, not gods."_

The silence that followed told the Echidna-girl that the conversation was over. The lack of Chaos' imposing presence served to corroborate that idea.  
With that, she turned her gaze outward, using her clairvoyance to look towards Knuckles.

On their return to the shrine, the red guardian had been true to his word, sitting at the base of the steps and thinking long and hard about Tikal's offer. A little too long – she had left without an answer, and had been reabsorbed into the mass of chaos. Her answer still had yet to come. His face told her that he had not set the matter aside, but she could not tell which way his opinion was swinging.

Of course, he could not know she was watching, either. Her sight from within the emerald gave others no clue to her intrusion, and so while Knuckles sat in silent thought, he did not know that the girl who had a crush on him was watching him make his choice.

He was not like Sonic, who made decisions based on a whim and then regretted them later, nor was he like Tails, with the smarts to make the right decision with but a moment's thought. He had to do things methodically, directly, just as he fought.

Technically it should be a no-brainer. They were both Echidna, both guardians, they got at long reasonably well almost all the time, aside from the occasional, almost obligatory quarrel. It came down, primarily, to semantics and more personal reasons. Natural indecision ruled him at the moment, as he decided how much he might regret this if he were to agree to her wishes.

_She's waiting for a decision, big guy. You can't keep her waiting forever, and it's a simple choice to make. Yes or no. You care for her, don't you? You're close friends, aren't you?_

He did care for her, she was a close friend. He couldn't deny that. In fact, when he looked at the facts and weighed pros against cons, he couldn't find anything holding him back except his own insecurity. He had never been with anyone, and he had been told that life as a guardian was a lonely job. Now Tikal was effectively stepping on those words, telling him different.

_Make up your mind. You know the rights and wrongs, what will go right and what won't. It's as simple as that. There isn't anything grey about it; get up, and tell her. Make your choice._

It couldn't hurt, could it?

Knuckles dragged himself to his feet, and turned towards the shrine, looking up the steps to the emerald, a barely perceptible smirk on his usually blunt features. He began to climb the steps, from bottom to top, each footstep painfully loud in the silence and isolation of the valley.

At the top he paused, closing his eyes and tilting his head forward sharply, and breathing in deeply, shaking almost invisibly.

Tikal followed him, both a silent observer and participant.

He almost choked on his own words as he placed his hand on the side of the emerald, halting the smooth rotation for a moment. It would not disturb the island, so long as it was not removed. Another long moment of silence passed, and he finally spoke.

"Tikal, I answer yes." It was not the most eloquent answer, in fact, as words go it was a pretty ugly sentence, but the content mattered more to the female Echidna, the fact that he had said yes. Him saying it in a manner so unwieldy didn't really matter at all.

But she couldn't show it. She couldn't show the rush of affection she had just felt, the cataclysm of emotion that came with the answer, trapped as she was within the emerald and its machinations. To show her feelings she would have to speak to Chaos about a temporary body again, and considering his chagrin from earlier, it was out of the question for the time being at least.

She could only hope that he knew what he had just done.

Chaos knew. The Chaos god saw everything that moved through his realm, and the spasm of emotion from Tikal's persona had drawn his attention, if only briefly. He knew what had just happened. He knew it was genuine too – the body between their souls in chaos had already been formed, the connection of two souls that were this close to each other in almost every way. The two Echidnas, though, did not know what they had truly set into motion. The god surveyed the timelines as they shifted around this event, his concern growing ever greater as new paths were trampled over the old ones for him.

They had no idea what they had done, at all. Even events that seemed unconnected in every way could be linked by the simple strand of fate, and one event changed innumerable others, and in turn they changed yet more. It was a ripple effect, changing history with every choice made by everything on the planet.

He could only see darkness.

* * *

After finishing his conversation with Sally, Rotor had done just as he had agreed, and thrown himself into this new project with his full heart. Now, several hours into it, he was stoically resisting the urge to fall asleep.

He found himself squinting into a test tube of blue-tinted liquid, connected to a small cylinder holding a single ring within, spinning slowly on a perfectly-symmetrical axis. The liquid was one of the chemicals used in the judgement plasma cases, and he wanted to see if it would react at all prior to fusion, to see how far he had to go with this research.

Nicole worked with him, not hampered by sleep, but reigned in marginally by her perceptions being split between this and the work on the Tails Mannequin, a piece of technology for which she was having to delve into her own databanks.

"I think we can move on, Rotor." The lynx said after an hour of fruitless work, "If the reaction hasn't occurred on any of the samples in this period of time, It's either not going to happen or take so long to activate that it will be essentially useless."

"What do you have in mind, then?" Rotor tried to refrain from snapping, force of will holding him from becoming irritable.

"We already have access to fusion rings, as we've used in bombs before, and amplification rings that we use to boost standard weapon function.

Would it be possible to create a casing for a fusion ring, then set up a series of amplification ring to boost the power output, so that it isn't expended in one go? The hardest part will be constructing a suitable casing…"

"Wait, wait a moment." The walrus interrupted the AI, yanking open a draw and ruffling through the papers inside, grumbling mutedly about his own lack of organisation. "Here we go!" He exclaimed, tugging a sheaf of papers free from the wad of writing. "This was the work I did when we were constructing the inner plating for the Mobotropolis shielding. As you- as you can see, it works. It should have the integrity to contain the fusion ring, and we can use redirectors to avoid wasting too much power. You might want to consider it for use on the Mannequin as well."

"It will need some adaptation."

"Not for the weaponry, it won't. It's designed to negate force from within, so we'll only need minor alterations. I'm not so sure about the robot. There's a good chance you'd need to reconstruct it on a molecular level to realign the particles enough to change the direction of resilience."

"If that's the case then it will be a waste of time. I'll take a look, but it doesn't sound promising. I didn't work on the shields with you either, so I've only got your notes to work from as a blueprint. Only one frame of reference."

The two lapsed into silence as Rotor packed away the first set of apparatus and began to take out pieces of another, then got up to visit the store cupboard, to see if he had any fragments of the plating left to use as a test. The AI lynx used the moment to check up more closely on her work on the Tails Mannequin.

At the current time there wasn't even a physical component; the entire Tails Mannequin existed in cyberspace as a concept, a virtual blueprint that she was still working on. In her mind the image rotated on every angle, copies of it being printed in spare megabytes, sections being selected and enlarged and the rest deleted, leaving her staring at dozens of different sections of physical data, let alone the streams of coding data that was taking up a good percentage of her brainpower. She needed to ask Tails for a better processor.

Her greatest concern lay in the weapon systems. She needed to find a compact solution to providing firepower equal to a Sunder robot in a Mobian-sized body. In this, her aid in finding a ring-weapon was partly self-driven.

She needed a weapon to mimic Tails' chaos powers, and ring-power was the closest there was to it. The fusion-ring-cannon, or FRC, was one of her forays into this field of technology – it was a new thing for everyone. They had used ring-_powered_ technology before, but the item itself was always exempt from rings itself. This new field actually used rings in the application of the technology, instead of simply being one of many power sources.

"We have a few fragments leftover." Rotor informed her, dropping the fist-sized pieces of red-tinged black metal onto the desk. "Do you know how to program a fusion ring?"

"I- I think so, yes." She stuttered as her perceptions realigned. "I can't do it on the fly like Tails can, but if you give me a minute I can make one for us to test. Are we testing the amplifier, or just the shielding?"

"The shielding for now, Nicole." Rotor answered disapprovingly. "We don't know how many amplifier rings we'll need, and thus we don't know how powerful it will be. We'll test that outside somewhere, during today. Now I want to be sure that when we are testing the amplifiers that the thing won't explode in my hands."

"You're going to test it yourself?"

"Yes- but no- but…it's a metaphor, or something silly like that. I'm tired Nicole, do you think you could avoid pointing out my spoken errors?" This time, he did snap, his temper fraying for the moment it took to say it. "Nicole, I'm very, very tired. I suffer from fatigue, being me. Try to realise that."

"Yes…yes…sorry. Can we…?" She gestured to the battered pieces of metal on the desk. "How are we going to stick them together?"

"We won't be using these pieces to test the weapon – obviously welding them doesn't work; the shell has to be made complete, first time. Once it cools and sets then it can't be changed. It's like a one-way Megatal. When we make the core chambers we'll have to make them work correctly each time. I trust you can provide the accuracy when we do so?"

"I can do that."

"Good. And don't let the Mannequin distract you while we're forming the core chambers. Any defective ones can't be re-used, so we have to throw them out. I'm sure you know why I'm saying this."

"Any failure is a complete failure. I get it, Rotor. I don't need the lecture from you as well."

"Good, then let's get moving." He gathered up the fragments again, kicking open the door with his foot and marching in a slightly-wonky line down the corridor, past the more conventional offices and towards the large chamber, reinforced and reserved for testing of more volatile devices, such as this one. Frankly the walrus was unsure as to whether the chamber was really able to withstand a fusion ring, as it was something that hadn't been tested in a test chamber, so he didn't really know.

Once again, Tails was the only one who would really know the answer to the question. He seemed to hold all the answers. Everything that was discovered was compared to his works, and to his science, because it was always an improvement on it or a variation of it. Pretty much everything was base off him these days.


	5. Powered i

Fortunately, due to the remarkable similarity to previous models, Designation: Metallix was simpler to produce than had been expected. They simply modified the construction module used for the creation of Neo Metal Sonic, and then Robotnik had made some…generous modifications to the robot itself. A new, compact weapon system had been added to each of the bulky gauntlets, space which Robotnik felt had otherwise not been used to its full potential.

He had decided to oversee the creation of Metallix himself, such potential it had. The chaos drive, while unbreakable, had shown levels of chaos energy that were almost unparalleled. Chaos emeralds had this sort of power, not mundane objects, and certainly no fusion drive. Truly, only Chaos could do something like this.

The mechanical arms built for such construction worked on the chassis suspended in a tank of coolant, fitting pieces on and using chemical welding in the below-zero conditions. Once the main body was assembled, more fragile pieces like the chaos drive and the processors would be installed outside the tank, where they would not risk damage from the liquid inside. He would be placing some of these pieces himself, but the greater part would be through automated or computed construction.

And he had learned from his previous mistakes; Neo Metal, Silver Sonic, Metal Sonic, they had all been failures for one reason or another. Often they had involved technical failure, but the overriding issue was that each one had been sent alone. This time he intended to make sure Metallix was backed up, but he could not afford to manufacture multiple Metallix models. He did not have the required Chaos drives, and he doubted Chaos was feeling _that_ benevolent. He had been kinder than he had expected already.

No, he would resurrect the Neo Metal line. It had been his most successful single M-series, and if he could produce a dozen to follow Metallix into battle it would bolster his power, and provide him with a series of secondary soldiers. Neo Metal troopers were powered by advanced fusion drives, but they were easier to make than a chaos fuel – in fact, before now, Robotnik had believed it impossible to create a chaos drive, and frankly it still was. Chaos had made it, not a mortal.

Robotnik turned away from the tube, marching swiftly to the door, the mechanism sliding smoothly open at his presence. The Metallix project may have become his primary project, but he still had other things to deal with. His contact in Soleanna had sent word of progress, and the rest of the world would not sit idly by as he sat here creating schemes. Factories that took up the vast bulk of his nation worked tirelessly in production of armoured legions, legions which were transported via massive airships and land-sharks to various battlefields around the border. As it stood, the Acorn Kingdom was still his greatest threat. He could not freely invade any other country without risking interference, by either the king's forces or the Freedom Fighters.

That said…the crown had changed hands. The same source that now stood over Soleanna had spent time watching the movement in the Acorn Kingdom, and when Maximilian's dethronement became evident, he was among the first to know. To his knowledge, the new crown was Elias, the Mobian's only son.

The Dictator chuckled to himself, new possibilities blossoming in his mind. The prince-turned-king was fresh, yes. He was trained by the best warsmiths in the Acorn Kingdom, true. He had never fought a true battle. The civil war that had broken out less than a month ago could have baptised the young king, but he had been away during the time, returning only after it had burnt itself out. It left him in command of the military, but with only the doctrines and methods he had been taught. It was a rigid structure to use. In such a position one would default to the military general, but he too was fresh to the role. He had more combat experience than Elias, granted, yet he was new to his role as commander, a status that hampered the newest.

The Civil War had left the kingdom clinging to itself, struggling to hold all the pieces together. A new king and a new general, it was militaristically weak, the only real defence were the Freedom Fighters. A precise enough strike would eliminate them, and with them, the remaining strength of the Kingdom. In essence, that was the key reason he had accepted the Metallix project. Anything from Chaos, a god decidedly neutral at best, had to be taken with a pinch of salt. The power within the chaos drive and the Metallix unit itself, however…it was something that could not simply be ignored.  
Venictus still hadn't contacted him, and the window of opportunity was rapidly diminishing. Something may have gone wrong.

His HUD glasses beeped suddenly. _Speak of the devil…_

"Professor." Venictus had no virtual avatar, nor camera to display himself. Instead, a small white dot signified his presence, and a modulator projected his voice unrecognisable monotone, hiding his identity as it always had. The man – or he had assumed it was – went to great lengths to conceal his identity from people, and while Robotnik suspected he had multiple identities, nothing he could do would confirm this.

"It's about time you showed up. You haven't got much time before they can see this frequency again."

"I know. I don't intend to stay. I know you had visitors. What did they want?"

Robotnik's eyebrows jumped. He hadn't known the man kept such a close watch on things. "They had things to discuss. What news have you got for me?"

"Miles Prower and Fiona Fox are out of action." Though the voice was disguised, there was but a hint of mirth in it.

"What? What do you mean?"

"Incapacitated by a recent ordeal. The member known as Lupin is also nowhere to be found. I believe he is dead. If you intend to strike, now is right."  
"My my, Venictus. You have an opportune way of presenting yourself." Robotnik smiled, his moustache rising with his grin. "That's exactly what I'm going to do."

"You have something in mind?"

"Indeed I do. You'll see in a couple of days, if you're watching. If I were you I would avoid interfering with it at any stage."

"I'll interfere if it suits my interests, Professor."

"If your interests are getting your informants killed, go ahead."

"Are you threatening me, Ivo?" Though emotion was unreadable, Venictus sound almost indignant. That could be expected; the two had been working as…faux-equals for a while now, and a comment like that could be thought of as insulting.

"No, just a friendly warning." Robotnik's face twitched in a smile. "What I'm planning should provide me with the systematic destruction of our little band of heroes. I'm not planning to discriminate between targets though; if you have anyone in Knothole when I put this plan into action, I can't vouch for their safety. If any of your men do end up dead, be assured that it's nothing personal."

"I don't hold feelings for my pawns, Robotnik."

"That's really not my interest. Good men and women are useful and hard to find these days, and I don't particularly care if there's a little collateral damage. I prefer to avoid it being to my own troops of course, but it would be a shame to find out I've killed one of your best."

"Indeed it would. Well, I'll tell you if that happens."

Robotnik frowned. There had been a jibe in there; if Venictus had made a hint either way it would have given the Professor a clue as to how the other had positioned his forces. It was immensely hard to get the advantage of Venictus, and any moment of triumph was appreciated in his eyes. It was an element of his force he had little control over.

But now that didn't matter. This new information, this revelation that the Freedom Fighters were at half-strength at best, was all the more reason to go ahead with the plan now. Had Chaos known this, and so delivered the plans now for that reason? Metallix needed to be ready soon, if he was to take advantage of this weakness.

"Is that all?"

"For now. None of the other plans you proposed have been implemented or completed, so there is nothing you need to know about."

"Are you-"

"Our time is up, Robotnik." Venictus cut him off. "Our window of opportunity is over. When I next find it necessary to contact you, you will know."

There was a blip as the link ended, and another frown from the professor. The other always contacted him in a different way each time, so that his methods would not become predictable.

[Doctor. Phase One Complete.]

* * *

Sally, now burdened with such responsibility, was running at low power. The kitsune often had a constant influx of information being processed, and most of it did not require her, as the teenager could perform the massive calculations needed almost on the spot. Commonly Nicole could act in his stead when he was away, or otherwise busy. With both Tails in his current state and Nicole assembling the Mannequin, all that information was streamed to her, and she couldn't do things half as fast as either of the other two could, even with several computers and processors. She hadn't ever wanted to be queen of the Acorn Kingdom, and this was the reason why. Lots of work that she couldn't cope with, and she wouldn't want to deal with two-dozen bickering councillors all arguing with each other about it.

A knock at the door snapped her from the trudging series of numbers, and it was almost welcome regardless of whom it was.

"Yes?" She asked, her voice cracking from lack of use.

The varnished wood shifted position and a gloved hand appeared round it, then Sonic followed. "Figured you could use someone to talk to." He said, managing a smirk as he shut the door behind him and dropped into an empty chair.

"Am I really that transparent?" Sally sighed, dropping her pen.

"Nah, I can just remember you telling me about all those reasons why you didn't want to be queen. Red tape is a bugger."

"It's not the red tape, that's just pointless crap." Sonic blinked at her expletive. "These are all the figures and information that's actually necessary. I just…I'm not fast enough. If Tails were here, he'd…he'd be able to do it in moments. Less than half the time it takes me."

"Want a little help?"

The squirrel raised an eyebrow. "You? I thought you were even less interested than I am."

"'Course I am, Sal, but I can't just let ya sit there having a meltdown. I'm not Tails, and I haven't got the same oomph in my head as he has, but at least I can make decisions. When you're pelting through a forest at the speed of sound you kinda have to think fast to avoid the trees. I'm usually right when it comes to that, so try giving me the gist of something and I'll give you an answer. Don't ask for reasons or you'll be here for even longer, but I can help."

"You sure? You haven't done this sort of thing before."

"Sal…" Sonic's voice dipped in pitch. "We're married, remember? This isn't exactly my area, but I'll give it a shot. With Tails and Fiona out of the picture, I can tell it's a bugger for you. You've got this…and I'll bet Robotnik is gonna take advantage of that. Him or someone else. That's normally what I do, but until Tails is back or someone tries to kill us, I'll pitch in somehow."

Sally was seeing a whole new Sonic. This Sonic wasn't just headstrong – though that was still there – this Sonic wanted to help when he was needed. Tails, his pseudo-brother, and Fiona, a teammate, were both important to him, and he could feel their absence just as well as Telera, the only really active team member. He wanted to help, because he knew what Tails meant to everyone.

"It's not the sort of thing I'd expect you to do."

Another sigh. "I know."

"Sonic, you don't have to- we need you ready for a fight if, no, when it comes."

"Since when have I not been ready for a fight?" The hedgehog got up and moved closer to Sally, dropping into the seat across from her at the desk. "I can help, just let me. If we need to fight, I'll be no less ready than if I sit in the living room watching TV. Just…break the rules for once. Let the idiot take a spin."

The squirrel watched him intently for a moment, scrutinising him for signs of a joke, then deflated visibly in her seat. There was no joke in his eyes, beyond the smugness he wore everyday like an old coat. For once…he was serious about it.

"Sonic, these decisions affect hundreds, if not thousands of people. It's not just you on the line with each choice."

"Come on Sal…open your eyes!" Her spouse huffed in exasperation. "I've lived in some of the worst places a city can have, when ya had to stick with your buds to get by. I know about making choices that can get people killed or save their lives. There's a brain in here somewhere, I just don't often need to brush the dust off it. Make the right decision, lots of people keep going as normal. Make the wrong decision, lots of people end up unhappy. I fight this fight knowing that fact every day. If you make the wrong decision, it's just as bad as me making it."

He reached across the table and took the back of her hand in his own. "Don't get me wrong, I'd be a worse king than Max was. I don't like knowing I'm dealing with lots of people. I'm just going to pretend that I'm everyone."

* * *

Nicole and Robotnik sat hundreds of miles away in different offices, with different thoughts, believing in different things, but right now their goals were very similar: Build a weapon.

The moment Sally had approved of the creation of a Tails Automaton the preparatory work had already been in motion. Nicole, the only truly sentient and free-thinking supercomputer, could perform more operations than even the advanced NODE AI that Robotnik had running his own base. Within the span of approximately four hours, most of the plans had been complete, and the artificial lynx was moving onto the weapons. Now, almost two days into things, all of the software was finished, and so was the constructional details. Virtual blueprints, digital combat models and step-by-step preparation, and she was about to start the real task of building the robot itself.

Both Nicole and Robotnik had access to the greatest computers on the planet, the greatest minds that had ever lived. One was a computer herself, the other mad enough to believe he could compete with one. The latter had made entire armies from steel and copper and computer parts; his factories took up the bulk of his empire and were always churning out more soldiers to be sent into combat. Reconfiguring a construction tank to build Metallix had been a relatively simple task.

Nicole only had a laboratory constructed by the greatest mortal mind on the planet, for the sole purpose of creation and testing of prototype technology. Her tools were assembled to be able to work across a range of materials and formations, and she had a Kingdom and beyond to draw said materials form. In the end she had the upper hand.

On the whole, The Tails Mannequin matched the kitsune's original frame, the basic layout drawn from X-rays and medical examinations, then moulded to fit the robotic base. Here and there it was more angular so that transforming components could rearrange more economically, but a layer of synthetic and hardened plastic plating gave it an altogether less imposing presence.

While she was still able, the AI enjoyed running herself through the robotic version of Tails. She hated to admit it, but she did feel something for it. Little beyond a close friendship perhaps, but she could not deny contemplation of something…more. Nevertheless, this was the closest she would get to him. There was someone more suited to him, and Nicole could move on. Still, she could not deny she enjoyed these moments, passing through a creation of her own that was also Tails in part, for soon she would seal it off from the rest of the world, so that the automaton was a lone-functioning unit. She couldn't risk having external signals breaching this soldier which she made as a tool for the Freedom Fighters.

The semi-artificial intelligence she had dubbed MI135 – her own little joke around Tails' forename – held all the information that was required to use each weapon system available to it, along with secondary data-stores for more common weaponry, just in case. She had given it memories, and reasons to follow the Freedom Fighters, rather than simply provide it with orders. A backup system held that information, if necessary, and both software and hardware safeguards in case anyone tried to do any manual modifications without consent.

This plethora of internal structure, combined with an iron-hard shell, a propulsion system in the feet and a weapon system that was hidden in the chest, tails and arms, it was a tough nut to crack. It lacked the chaos capacity that Tails did – in fact, the agreement that a chaos emerald would be dangerous had negated any chance of it, so instead she had tried to make adequate replacements. The hands held transformable ring-cannons as she and Rotor had discussed, testing having proven…tense. Each one could provide a short-range burst of up to one-hundred paces, and had shown that it had sufficient power to blow a tree into little burnt bits. The malleable, rubbery substance that made his tails could flatten and slide away, revealing close-combat weaponry or shielding, depending on the situation.

His chest…that was more like a failsafe, a backup weapon if things stopped going the way they planned. That was a feature that Nicole _had_ installed without consent, but she was a living, sentient being. She had the right to make her own choices, for good or ill.

Leaving it felt like she was leaving a part of herself behind. In a way, she was. It had been designed and built by her, and it was almost one of her own legionnaires. Still, for this to be an independent unit it had to be isolated from the network, responsible to only commands given in the form a normal Mobian could understand. Her conscious diminished instantly, by the most minuscule amounts, robbed off the sophisticated equipment in the android but the sensors covering the room making up for it. It- he, was ready.

A robotic arm built into the ceiling slid out and selected a port in the wall, digging into it and emerging a moment later with thin pipe, a complicated set of fang-plugs at the exposed end. It snaked out the wall with a metallic scratching, pulled across the floor by the arm to be connected into a lone access port fitted in the recesses of the Mannequin's left ear. The cable was meant to be able to channel several gigawatts of power into a recipient, willingly or otherwise. The twin fusion cores that powered the Mannequin, however, were self-sufficient once activated. They could renew their own power unless the reserves dropped below a certain level, and the cabling was only being used to kick-start the cells. It almost seemed a waste of the capacity, to be punching such a pitiful amount of power through it, but she didn't want to put any more through and end up immolating one of her favourite contraptions.

It connected with a barely-audible click.

The power that tricked through it didn't even have the satisfying hum of a generator, but she felt it start, and milliseconds later she started to see a power signature start to emanate from the mass of electronic blurring, then fade just as quickly as power mufflers kicked in and contained all of this aura within the armoured shell. The eyes, decidedly non-Mobian, lit up with a pale white ambience, soulless and dead.

The plastic and metal plates on the Mannequin started to click and shiver, each one being run through a quick 'pre-flight' operations test, to ensure that every part was at least mobile. For a moment the vibrations made it appear lifelike, the plastic flashing to fur and the false become the real thing, a sudden juxtaposition for a moment. Nicole hadn't been expecting this – her feelings shouldn't be clashing in this way; it was part of an imagination she only half-possessed, the ability to imagine things that did not exist. She saw a version of him that didn't belong to her, and felt a motion in herself that could only have been described as a shiver, a mix of apprehension, confusion, and excitement.

The avatar of the lynx frowned, as did the various other copies of her.

She wasn't meant to feel like that – she had already decided to put those feelings aside. She didn't want to force anything on the kitsune, and she already knew he would find his way to another, if he had not already done so.

"Nicole, is everything alright?"

The voice startled her, along with the owner of it. The Tails Mannequin had moved, no longer standing in the centre of the room, but a few steps closer to her, unblinking eyes centred on the avatar. The voice he had used was not unlike Tails, thought it lacked the same feeling to it; there was more of an edge. Still, there was a genuinely inquisitive tone to it.

"I'm fine." She straightened, masking her surprise at the robot's concern.

"You were surpr-r-r-r-r-r-" unconsciously the robot reached up and smacked the side of its head, the report ringing through the chamber. "-rised, approximately seven-point-four seconds ago. Your expression indicated as so."

"Your audio processor isn't functioning properly." Nicole persisted, trying to brush aside his words.

"It will be fine. Software often fails in initial testing. I can correct it. Are you surprised I am operational so quickly?"

"I was expecting powering-up to take longer. Your cores kicked in faster than I expected, but my mind was on other things."

"A distracted supercomputer. That could be dangerous."

"I know." She was starting to be irritated. His persistence in asking about her state of health was a gesture that should be appreciated, but hearing it from an obviously inorganic automaton was oddly chilling, far too much like the real Tails. "You try running a city sometime."

The robot considered her words before answering. "I think I might, someday."


	6. Powered ii

The first sign that Rotor had of the Mannequin's operational status was when it walked into his office and sat down, the tails behind it curling round the seat. The walrus woke quickly as he heard the footsteps, but stayed in silence as the robot sat, noticing the clicking mechanisms in his appendages.

"So, you're ready. I would have thought you would have taken longer to charge."

"Nicole is good at what she does." The robot replied casually, taking in the surroundings. "I don't know the estimated time for my charging of course, but once I started receiving power I decided to speed the process up by redirecting it to my primary power source, and kick-starting the others from there."

"Wait, your processor was on already? It should have been the last thing to be active." Rotor leant forward on his desk, eyebrows arched.

"I retained a micro-charge of power from when she was testing individual components. I've been active since then."

_Not good._ He had been sentient before he was even operational. He had been aware, at least a basic capacity, before the processor was connected to a decent power supply. The Mannequin was one of a few artificial intelligences on Mobius, and none of the others had been able to start themselves. It may be based on Tails, but it wasn't him. It shouldn't be able to do that.

"How much information did you absorb before your known activation?"

The Mannequin narrowed its eyes at Rotor. "I didn't. The processor only had enough room for a fraction of short-term memory. It was enough to self-activate when I was able, but not enough for me to retain other information."

"How…peculiar." The walrus had to admit, he was enjoying this. An AI based of Tails' intellect but with a slightly different personality. Someone he could have a decent conversation with. "Have you been brought up to speed on the current situation?"

"No. It wasn't in the databanks Nicole installed."

"Then I need to bring you up to speed. We're three team members down, out of our six active ones, and at least one of those down and outs isn't coming back. Our lead scientist, who's basically who we used as your blueprint, is out of action for god-knows how long."

"And I'm his replacement."

"Oh, hardly. You're still a new team member, his design suited you though. Simple coincidence, my friend. Speaking of which, you need a name. We've been using the code Miles Mannequin as your working name, but it's only fair that you choose your own."

"I'll think about it." The Mannequin rose unceremoniously and left the room, absorbing and analysing his environment with every step he took. Boxes covering his vision, generating a virtual reality, gave him a succinct analysis of every combat-oriented feature around him, and how he could use things not purposed for combat in a combat-related manner. He was literally a walking death machine, and he damn-well knew it.

And the stares he was getting from the other scientists only confirmed what he already knew.

No-one else knew he existed until now. He would be an anonymous personality until someone put data about him into the system, and that gave him at least a little time to experiment with what he could do.

As he walked his HUD flickered, and he began receiving all information concerning Knothole, Mobotropolis, and the entirety of the Acorn kingdom, and so in the space of a few seconds he already knew what MilesCorp was and what they did. The figures, the statistics, the amount of weapons and technology rocked his circuitry. His blueprint had been extensive in his work.  
His comm beeped.

A name flashed across his screen – Sally. _So, Nicole had already told the other Freedom Fighters._  
"Sally Acorn. To what do I owe the pleasure?" He made his response before she could state her query, even though in fact he already knew the answer.

"You're the Mannequin?"

"Affirmative, at least until I can think of a suitable replacement name. I was informed it's a working title, subject to my choice if I want another."

Of course she would call. Sally Acorn, the Freedom Fighter's lead strategist, alongside…who? Who was the other strategist? The information was there but the name was not. But of course, Sally, who kept leads on all of her members, would want to know him by name at least, and would doubtless want him to keep her informed as to his actions. How stifling. "Is that all?" He added.

"No. You're a Freedom Fighter, so you're going to have to come by so I can explain our current situation."

"I know the situation, Sally. The Walrus…Rotor, has already explained, and Nicole gave me some information prior to activation. I am not yet in need of additional data." Already, she was attempting to control his actions.

"And you're content with that?"

"If I find that I am not, I will seek you out immediately. Until then, additional information will simply be taking up memory. I am not sure my memory to processing ratio is completely functional, so additional tests will be performed by me before I start accepting information that may or may not be useful."

"If Nicole's specs are right, you're absorbing plenty of information already, a lot of which you'll probably think is useless. How would my work take up and more or less space?"

"Because you are explaining it. Organics have a greater margin for error, and I have to compensate for that, this generating a number of alternate possibilities, all except one are defunct. As to your previous statement, I am currently eliminating any files deemed to have a lack of use at two hour intervals." That was a fabrication in almost every instance. His memory core was stable. His processor was functioning optimally, with the occasional random dip in a fraction of a percent of his capacity. He was definitely not deleting any information that came in, unless he could find not even a fraction of use.

It meant he was lying to someone who was either his direct superior or his equal, as well as a member of royalty, but neither of those facts concerned him. It was to his advantage if he retained information about his functionality from those he was siding with, at least for the time being.

If he found siding with them was fighting a losing battle…

Well, then he would make plans to relocate.

* * *

He visited her as often as he could, after consenting to the use of a wheelchair by the doctors. His mobility was already impaired, and while his recovery would be both naturally quicker and more complete than Fiona's, the sheer concentration of Anarchy energy system still posed its most potent threat within his mind. Bodily damage could be repaired, even without his chaos powers, but Anarchy energy and come to conflict with his mind and the danger to him now was psychological damage. He remained confident that he would press through it, but both the doctors and Fiona knew by now he was prone to going beyond his limits, and that was something that couldn't be maintained.

He was given a mundane wheelchair, pushed by his own two hands as opposed to any electrics. Despite the grim prediction, everyone had found it highly amusing that for once Tails wouldn't be able to mess with the electronics, and he would actually get to use his physical musculature, instead of being able to power everything forward with a bit of chaos energy.

"This has been blown out of all proportion." Tails told Fiona, as he wheeled the bulky thing through the door yet again, sighing and putting on a pained expression as it got caught on the doorframe for what seemed like the tenth time that day.

"Your wheelchair, or your brain?" Fiona muttered in reply – she was quite blatantly more concerned about him than he was.

The male kitsune raised his eyes and forced himself to meet Fiona's gaze. Now her sky blue eyes seemed both scolding and alluring; one feeling he understood, the other a mystery to him. Her fur, which had for the most part been sloughed off by the heat of the plasma surge, was only now beginning to grow back in fuzzy patches where the Echidna regenerative treatment had begun to work on her genetics and repair the normally irreparable damage that had been done.

"You're the only one who doesn't seem to care what could happen to you."

"Because it won't happen." He stated bluntly in reply. "If it was going to degrade my neural system, it would have-" One eyebrow rose on his otherwise low face. "You're messing with me, aren't you?"

"No, I'm not." The vixen sighed at his ignorance, his lack of understanding; he was incredibly narrow-minded. "You don't know everything Tails. If you did, we wouldn't be in this situation. Neither of us would have ended up almost dead because of your mistake."

"_My_ mistake?" This wasn't good. They were arguing. "It's hardly my-" Fiona wasn't having any of it. She had been waiting for years to try and get the courage to stand up to him.

"Yes Tails, _your_ mistake. Stop trying to hide it. Just because you're smart it doesn't give you leave to make a mistake and then cover it up just to excuse yourself and retain your damn dignity. Sonic's proud, but at least he has the grace to know he's done it wrong. You just paint over it, assuming none of us will actually point it out because you seem to be the self-appointed leader."

"Very well, then." The other fox took a deep breath, swallowing his pride for a moment. The words were hitting him hard, and source knew he didn't have the strength to think of a good argument. "What was my mistake?"

"Dumping Amy." Fiona practically spat the words, holding up a hand to stop his objection.

"The way you did it." She paused again, trying to get her thoughts and facts in order. Even now it was scary in a way, talking to him like this. It could ruin so much more than it would fix.

"She was using me to get to Sonic. It wasn't like she didn't deserve it." Tails whispered in the silence.

"Maybe. You're right, she deserved the break-up. You're right. But you didn't even think about what it would lead to. None of us exactly are comfortable around Amy – it's not like we don't know how extreme she is with everyone, with Sonic mostly, but whatever people say, she always reacts in the worst way to things. You knew, but you still didn't bother to think about what your actions would cause."

Her younger by a bare amount, this was the first scolding he had received from her…that he could remember. She had a command in her voice he was unfamiliar with as well – it wasn't something he noticed. His technology, leadership, it all took time…he had never listened. He hadn't slowed down enough before. It had always been Sonic who would be called out, put down for that; not him.

"You wanted to get rid of her, so you did it in the most forceful way possible, and when she disappeared…you didn't care. You just got her back because you thought you should, not because you actually regretted what you said, and then she was apologising to _you_, from what I heard. You didn't care about her feelings, how she would react, and you didn't care about me."

He might as well have gone a round with Super Sonic - it would have hurt less, and he would have understood how to cope with it. Sonic had told him off. So had Sally. So had Nicole. In fact, pretty much everyone he knew had done so at some point, and each time he had been at his peak, defences raised and had simply brushed aside their accusations with some well-placed sentiment or conjecture, or in Nicole's case, genuine argument.

Everyone except Fiona.

She had shown concern for his ways before, sometimes joined in during the arguments, but only offering an statement or fact. She hadn't chosen a side before. The more he thought about it, the more she had tried to come to a compromise or to reason through the best solution…she had tried to keep everyone together, more than anyone else had ever tried.  
But her patience had finally exhausted itself, it seemed. While he was at his most vulnerable, she had shown how she really felt.

But…

That couldn't be right…

What were these thoughts now?

_Accelerated breathing._

_Seemingly-spontaneous bursts of activity in the pleasure centres of her brain._

_Frantic speech, stumbling over words, forgetting them._

"Fiona…" He finally spoke, his eyes dropping from her to the floor, to his lap. "I need to ask…"  
He took a deep breath, pushing his head back to face the ceiling, for the first time not feeling confident enough to meet her eyes.

"I know what you're saying." He began, his voice unsteady. "And I think I understand why. You don't like the way I do things. But you're not the only one; I don't think anyone likes the way I do things now. But I can't say sorry, not now. It wouldn't accomplish anything."

"It would prove to me that you know you've been cruel, unkind. It would show me that you actually had a conscience, not just a brain." It scared him, how so few words could hurt so much.

He sighed.

"Sentiment isn't something I've really placed much stock in, you've probably noticed. I don't have a past worth remembering, so trying to survive and keep having a future is all I can think about. Apologies are things for the past, when it's too late to correct something done wrong. I am sorry, for what little it's worth from me."

Fiona sighed, but he didn't look down at her.

"But I know you want me to change, I know you want me to show more emotion, to be more of a person. But I need to ask. How long have you felt the way you have?"

A spluttering, shaky cough rang from the bed, and his head snapped back to level, concern rushing through his mind.

"Wh- what did you say?" Her voice was hoarse from the sudden expulsion of air.

"How long have you been feeling like this? That night in the hotel, on Moebius…you told me about it, I still don't know how long you've felt this way, and after all this, after all you just said…I don't know how you feel now."

"I don't know how to feel. I thought I felt…differently about you, Tails. Now I'm not so sure." Fiona's eyes snapped shut, trying to contain tears, her voice dissolving slightly into sobs. "I don't want you stop trying to achieve what you do…but there has to be a better way. There has to be some way to do it that means you're not just pushing everyone away. You're in a team, Tails. It's not just you."

The kitsune was out of words. He didn't know what to say anymore – not to Fiona, not to anyone. She'd found him when he couldn't just brush it off, and he had lost. So rare, it was so painful.

* * *

"Cronus, estimated time until completion."

**["Final stages of activation in progress. Pre-activation tests running. Current estimate at optimal efficiency. Weapon systems successfully integrated into chassis. Chaos core installation required. Repeat: Chaos core installation required."]**

"I know _that_ you imbecile. I'm the one holding it." Robotnik snapped at the machine, turning the small piece of equipment over and over in his hands. Even after all of his tests he was still sceptical about how well the chaos drive would perform, and had contemplated putting it in a lesser model to test just that, but his own lack of information had stopped him.

He didn't know how it would react to being installed in something not built to the right specifications, and if it did work, he didn't know how easy it would be to remove. To simply add to his frustration, none of his scans had been capable of revealing anything about the ineffable little item, making duplication for testing completely out of the question  
He was left with only the option to proceed and hope for the best. It wasn't a situation he particularly liked, but the rewards that could come of a successful operation outweighed this sketchy beginning.

**["Pre-activation tests complete. Final stages of activation complete. Chaos core installation required to complete activation."]**

Now it seemed he would see how much use his preparation would be. He had constructed the Metallix unit in the same chamber he had created his Metal Sonic variants, and the design being so similar had meant using the old chamber was a no-brainer.

"Very well. Let's get this over with." Robotnik stood from his hover-chair, stomping over to the transparent glass chamber as the front panels of the tube slide aside, revealing the near-complete chassis for Metallix, several spindly robotic arms holding armour plates apart from the chest cavity, a multifaceted slot awaiting the chaos drive.

His fingers rotated the drive in his hands, aligning it mentally with the slot, before reaching out and giving a soft press into the chamber – if you described Ivo Robotnik, soft or gentle would not be words that anyone would attribute to him, but that was him outwardly. He took great pride in what he created, and he took great care as he assembled each creation. His factories might be for mass-production, but each was still prepared so that the consistent standard was high on each model.

His hands were barely away from the chamber when the limbs fitted the remaining plates in, the smooth sliding of metal and clicking of the plates fixing together, a pair of fusion torches gliding into place to melt the outer armour together in a seamless blue glaze.

Robotnik didn't have time to react before something very heavy and solid collided with his midriff and sent him across the room, his thankfully augmented limbs absorbing the force of the impact. Even so, he blacked out for a moment from the force of both the strike and the impact.

He heard the tearing of metal and shattering of reinforced glass, and felt a shard of it bury itself in his leg, cutting through even the strengthened metal cybernetics.

The shock and jolt of pain forced him awake however, glaring through his glasses at the active optics of Metallix.

"Identify yourself." The robot blared, unedited vocal units projecting an imperious voice that filled the room.

The professor wanted to shout, to rave at the damned piece of machinery for so simply defying him so soon, but it was Chaos' work. He was not entirely to blame for its creation, and so he choked back his rage and mustered his politeness through the white pain in his leg. "I am Ivo Robotnik. Your creator."

"Incorrect." The voice replied, the tone shifting, deepening marginally, the sound level dropping a few octaves. "You did not create me."

Still conscious of the pain in his leg, the professor kept talking. "I assembled you. I named you. That makes me your creator." Then he breathed a sigh of relief, as the pain faded to a dull throbbing, chemical mixes within his limbs injecting into his bloodstream to numb the pain.  
"Status Confirmed: Ivo Robotnik." The voice softened into a deep rumble, but it peaked at the end, almost as if Metallix was being sarcastic, or spiteful. "Status: Catalyst. Strategic use: Minimal."

"Why you-" The professor reached down, tearing the shard of iron-like glass from his leg, grunting as blood spat from the wound, sealing as nanites within him raced to repair the damage. "I built you! I made you as powerful as you are! You obey my command, Metallix, you obey me!" Such a massive degrading of his status in such a way left Robotnik livid with rage. "You will follow _my_ commands!" He began to walk, marching towards Metallix in great, stomping strides.

The robot watched him approach, impassive, until only a few feet separate them and then his reaction was a blur. His clawed had shot out, snapping round Robotnik's throat and carrying him to the ground, the robot dropping to one knee beside him to maintain his grip, his quarry already going blue.

"I am not yours to command. My agenda is one set by the gods. You will aid me in completing this task, and you will not command me." His weight was rapidly off the professor, the organic man gasping for breath. "Am I understood?"

Robotnik forced himself to his feet, staggering slightly as his brain re-oxygenated. He met the cobalt robot's gaze levelly, in silence. He didn't have a choice of course, but he would not openly admit it.

"I will interpret your silence as an affirmative. Therefore appropriate software and hardware is to be installed within a chamber for my specific use. This will be separate from your mainframe. It will have none of your artificial intelligence units installed. It will be left inactive when not in use by me. The programming will be neutral until submitted to my design. The hardware will be the highest standard available to you."

Metallix stood in cold silence a moment longer, then turned and stalked towards the door, leaving his host standing in the middle of the chamber, surrounded by torn metal and shards of glass, the leg wound still undergoing repair and his brow sweating furiously. Only now did he look down and realise exactly how bad the damage was. His armour clothing suffered from multiple minor scraps, though none of them had pieced the flesh like his leg wound.

The rest of the room had fared no better, fist-sized chunks of metal and glass adorning the walls like some bad decorating incident, testament to the power and resilience something designed by a god could display.

A grin played across the man's lips. _Snively._ He would encounter the guest and his temperament soon enough. That would be something that Robotnik would at least want to witness, however funny.

Brushing glassy dust from his suit and making a mental note to repair it, he set off at a steady pace to track down one robot in a complex bristling with them.


	7. Unexpected Suffering

The professor caught up with Metallix in a corridor some distance from where he had begun, apparently absorbed in the task of inspecting his left forearm, one hand carefully tracing the lines where plating would slide aside to reveal the internal weapon systems, apparently with little concern to the damage he was doing, in regard to the scraping of metal on metal as his talons gouged along the thin crack.

At first it seemed he was too absorbed in what he was doing to notice Robotnik's approach. He wasn't.

"You have made unauthorised modifications to my chassis." The robot intoned, his voice neither scornful or pleased. "These were not in my original design specifications." He didn't look up at the professor, but it was not difficult to see what he was implying. "The instructions were to assemble me to the exact specifications given, without modification. Your unwarranted changes will be of detriment to my combat ability. I will request that you remove them and restore my system to its primary state."

"I can't do that, Metallix. I didn't build you to be taken apart."

"Another clear reason why you should _not_ have taken it into your own hands to make changes." The robot finally looked up, meeting his gaze levelly. "I am not to be tampered with." The plates on his forearm slid aside, the weapon installed – a thin, energy-powered weapon sliding out from inside. As it rose, the barrel extended telescopically, jutting out to the end of his hand, sitting close to the forearm itself. A single ready light on the back lit up promptly, informing the two that the weapon was ready to fire.

"Your design is inefficient. This power supply requires a recharge time of two point eight-nine seconds before another shot can be fired. The power source required to charge this takes up ninety percent of my forward capsule. The recharge time would have to be reduced to at least one point zero four seconds before the rate of fire would be sufficient for the damage output. Your weapon is not within acceptable parameters."

His free hand clamped over the weapon, claws leaving deep gouge marks in the metal barrel. With sharp twist, it snapped free from the internal mechanism. With his eyes fixed firmly on Robotnik, Metallix smashed the useless weapon into the wall, crushing it into it until it lay almost flush with the neatly-layered metal plating.

The second weapon in the other forearm followed suite moments later, joining its twin in the wall.

Robotnik was not privy to the information, but a notice appeared in Metallix's eye line.

[Generator power will be re-routed to emergency power source. Function level during utilisation: Minimal.]

Well, it was better than nothing. If the chaos drive went offline it would at least provide him with enough time to find a new source of energy. Failing that, the primary objective was still achievable in a low-power state.

"You are rapidly proving yourself useless to my endeavour." Metallix informed Robotnik calmly. "You have failed to provide me with suitable accommodation. You have made unauthorised modifications to my unit. You have defied my commands to this point. Prove yourself useful or you will be terminated."

The dictator paused. He stepped back. He opened his mouth and closed it again without words, his jaw working as it struggled to find some way to address the other from a position of authority without joining the guns rammed into the wall.

Metallix noticed that fact, and spoke again before the dictator could get his bearings. "You are a failure, Ivo Robotnik. My master imbued me with knowledge of your past exploits and there is nothing that warrants any of your supposed authority over me. I do not ask you to grovel at my feet. I do not ask you to worship me as a god. You will meet my requirements and orders. Otherwise, you will leave me unwatched. It is a simple task that you should be able to perform. Do so."

The overlander was quivering with rage – barely contained anger clashing with his desire to remain alive, as his mind pieced together what had just been said to him.

Seconds of this and a calm nerve abruptly stole over him, and his expression returned to one of grim satisfaction. The expression left him unreadable, his mind opening up a whole new plethora of possibilities.

"Will it interfere with any of my other projects?" he asked finally, the demanding, ordered tone gone from his voice and replaced by a more placating, conversational manner.

This sudden change in mood flagged up for Metallix. He knew that a change as sudden as this meant that whatever had just happened, Robotnik had a plan forming in his mind. He could not read the organic's mood or thoughts, true enough, but he could see well enough that the other was thinking hard. Finally, he answered, his tone showing none of his doubts or reservations. "Not currently. If my task does happen to intersect with one of yours at some time within the future, I will warn you. I will give you time to adjust. If you do not rearrange it in time, I will continue regardless, however."

"In that case, I can arrange your quarters…and then we will not have to interact again."

"Affirmative." Without pausing, the robot turned and stalked away, ears filtering out the grumbling confirmation from behind him. Robotnik was up to something. He didn't want Metallix to hear about it. That was not exactly suspicious given how they were getting on, but this curious mood had appeared after quite a severe scolding. Something was up. It involved him. He would find out what it was, somehow.

Robotnik barely noticed him leave. He was too busy scheming, working out how he could turn this situation to his advantage. It was abundantly clear that Metallix would not obey any orders given to him, and likely any attempts to open up his system would be met with the receiving end of his weapon system. But it was a challenge, nothing more. There was a way to manipulate the standings…it just took a little work.

His hand went to his ear, activating the communication bead. "Cronus, commence Phoenix Strike."

["Phase One beginning. Personal preferences?"]

"Unmanned." He stated simply.

["Phoenix Strike is at 90% completion. Phoenix Strike is not prepared for activation."]

"Activate it now." His tone became more demanding. "Complete the final phases while the mission is in progress."

["Completing while mission is in-progress will approximately double remaining time until completion. Confirm?"]

"Just get on with it." There. His irritable snap was back. Now the new idea had formed, his personality had found the time to reassert itself so he would go about it as he always did. By initiation Phoenix Strike early, he had effectively reorganised his entire list of priorities. His original plan had been to get the Metal Sonic Squadron working for Metallix, but as it had become apparent that the robot would accept no help other than that he requested, that idea had quickly fallen into the backwaters of his imagination.

He didn't plan to work around his lodger however, he planned to work through him. Whatever he was doing would stir up trouble for the Freedom Fighters, and give him his own window of opportunity. Phoenix Strike was simply the first step. Now, for the moment, all he could do was hope it didn't clash with whatever mysterious agenda Metallix was working under.

* * *

No-one had predicted how MI135 would behave. Though Nicole herself had made the precaution of drawing up several digital models of how she predicted his personality to behave, they were all substantially flawed compared to the functional unit itself, apart from one thing:

He had indeed taken to calling himself Miles. Ease of pronunciation, he had said.

He was an enigma. His key personality model did not function the way anyone had predicted, and instead of getting straight to work as Tails would have done, he spent a lot of time talking to Nicole. It wasn't business.

While he spent his time assisting her with physical work, lifting and repairing and general maintenance in the lab, his conversation was less directed, more personal.

"Why did you base my design on Tails?" He asked, out of the blue, while he still had his hand halfway through a pile of wiring behind a service panel. Despite his change in topic, he didn't appear to lose any concentration on the job. "You don't seem the type to take ideas from others."

For a moment, Nicole didn't answer. There wasn't really a right way to reply to it. She had already discovered his…alarming talent for emotion, and telling him now that he had based him off of Tails would simply be cruel.

"I…it seemed like a good idea at the time." She replied awkwardly in a quiet voice, her avatar glancing away. "I don't know."

"Going with what you know already because it's a working design already." The mech resisted the urge to shrug. "The blueprint _is_ still alive, yes?"  
"He's injured."

"Then he'll be returning to active duty once he has recovered?"

"Yes." Nicole could see where this was going. She knew the question he would next ask. She didn't like it.

"Then what will become of me? You've said it, I'm a duplicate using the blueprints of another – I'm a temporary replacement. Once he returns and takes his position once more, what will happen to me?"

Nicole froze. Not some fancy computer glitch stopping her avatar – she just froze. She didn't have a response. He had said everything she had wanted him not to say, and she realised one of the fatal flaws of her knowing what it was like to be organic…hesitation. Procrastination. She had been too busy noticing what he was saying that she hadn't planned for what to give in reply. Now she was in that awkward moment where something had to be said, but nothing could be spoken without appearing shoddy or forced.

"As I suspected. You don't know." Miles muttered and turned away again. You haven't thought any of this through beyond my construction and activation. You chose my blueprint not out of a practical plan, but with some other plan in mind, if you indeed had one at all. Really. I expected better." He paused a moment, an idea forming in his head. "You want to know what I think?"

Nicole nodded gingerly, still a little embarrassed by her slip-up. She had backed herself into a corner and now he was helping her out of it.

"While it would be a waste of time for any work to be done on me now – in any case I would have to be taken off service while it was done, and that would null the reason for my creation – once Tails returns to active service, we will redesign my outer chassis. Alter my form so that I no longer appear as his duplicate. When that is done, I will choose my new name. He will return to active duty, and I will remain so. Would that be possible?"

It was a possibility Nicole believed she had considered – only in passing, for it hadn't seemed right that he would want to continue once Tails had returned. But then, she had failed to predict him so far; why would that change now?

"Your armour is made of a substance almost as tough as Megatal. We'd need to make new armour plates and re-use old ones very, very carefully, but it could be done."

"I imagine any changes larger than a simple modification of this shell would be a waste of time. The tails must remain – they are built into my combat system and removing them would also remove one of my key combat components. Aesthetic modifications would be the best, so my design could be made different without expending excess effort."

"Why the sudden interest? You've not been around long – I didn't think you'd be too worried about this until Tails was set to return."

Miles sighed. "I'm planning for the future, while it still is the future." Within the panelling the wires sparked and fizzed as a tiny micro charge burning on the tip of his index finger soldered new wiring in place of damaged components. "I would rather discuss this now, with time to account for changes of heart, though the term is inaccurate. I don't want to realise that I have not prepared, when time is up." Slowly he manoeuvred his hand from the panel, replacing the plate and soldering it back on with his finger, turning fully to face Nicole's avatar. "I plan on staying, after all."

"I wasn't implying you would leave."

"I know." He stated, one hand landing softly on the lynx's shoulder. "but I thought you might like so reassurance." He leant forward and brushed the avatar's cheek with his faceplate, dropping his hand and moving past her.

"I will do my appointed task, until we come to the point I must change myself." He muttered, without explaining his actions, and began to move away.  
Nicole remained motionless. Once again, she was confused.

Had she just been _kissed?_

* * *

He missed a day talking to her – there wasn't anything to be said. His mouth had moved and for the first time he could remember nothing smart coming out. To his knowledge, nothing came out. A passing nurse had peered into the room ten minutes later, seen the state of the vixen and escorted Tails back his room in silence.

_"You know how badly she's injured. Distressing her will only make her recovery time lengthen."_ The nurse had told him. He had indeed been considering retaliating, with the knowledge that he did understand what she meant. Something had made him reconsider – the words Fiona had used.

_" You're in a team, Tails. It's not just you."_

He had known that of course – the Freedom Fighters were a constant reminder of the war he fought – but to hear it so bluntly, spoken from the lips of a girl who was in a worse shape than he was but worried more about him than he did…

It spoke volumes about him.

But now, he didn't know what to care about. Fiona had finally revealed her feelings to him, now secure in the fact that she could not look him in the eye…without being reminded of what he had done wrong. No longer could he hide himself behind a wall of dignity – he could fail now. No, he had, but he hadn't been able to admit it. Days upon days upon months upon years of pain and hurt had brushed away all of the will to accept defeat, to only allow for victory, and to only strive for survival.

Now, here, broken and almost dead himself, having caused the abduction of one team member, the disappearance of another and mortal wounding of himself and Fiona, he was realising just how far he could fall. His mind slowed to a crawl, going over and over the things that he had said and heard, felt and made others feel. His vision, already clouded by his wounds and blood loss, fogged by anarchy energy, hazed further as he drifted from reality to delve into his thoughts, and rip them apart.

So far, the only thing he was absolutely certain of was that whatever he thought already, he could no longer abide by. It was a set of rules that were outdated and were not compatible – no, morally wrong – in this world, in this time. However he chose to see the world anew, it would not be through this tattered old lens. Or…maybe it was old, maybe he needed to see things from a perspective he had known before…just brush the dust off.

No…that didn't feel right. The last time he had felt that way was six years ago, going back to that…would he even remember how? Could he return to that frame of mind?

Regardless, he had to change. He…he…he needed to fix this. He knew what he had caused, the damage he had done to everyone, and before he attempted to fix himself he had to fix what he had done to the others. To Nicole, he owed an apology, to his lack of trust. To Fiona he owed an apology, and now a thanks, for waking him up. And god forbid…he had to apologise for Amy. He couldn't bring himself to say sorry for breaking up with her, but at least for the way he had…and even then they would likely not see eye to eye for some time. They were all owed more than simple apologies of course, as soon as he could think of how to deal with that end of the situation.

Those realisations out of the way, he had to take a look at other, practical matters…but he didn't feel up to it; he couldn't think. This emotional rush had drained him. It felt like he was lying in a pool of gel, suckered to one position, the effort to move more than he could handle. Even physical tasks seemed daunting, his body not responding to his motions and his mind sluggish, barely capable of th- thought…

Panic hit like a battle tank. Adrenalin in him rushed into action, clearing the worst of the blurring and forcing muscle groups into action. Agony.

Absolute agony. But enough autonomy to hit the panic button on the side of the bed before once again he could no longer act under his own steam.

Voices.

Doctors, nurses, surgeons, consultants…all hurrying, all speaking in soft tones…nothing…

White, but moving, another area of the hospital? Nothing…

Movement, panic. Silence.

* * *

Silence, for time he could not estimate, until a dull throbbing proved to him he was still alive. He could not see. He could not hear. He could not smell. He could not taste. Only his touch was really picking anything up. If he concentrated he could feel dozens of little patches all over him, intravenous drips in his arms…and something…someone…holding his hand, thumb over the wrist.

Something had gone wrong, he could surmise. Without an explanation, he could tell that something had made his body shut down, and possibly he had managed to save himself with that little ditch attempt with the panic button. Probably the advanced decomposition of his biological structure, another guess, from all the anarchy energy he had absorbed. He could at least be certain that he was in good hands.

He was alive at least, and considering that sudden and rapid deterioration this outcome was pretty good, from what he could tell. There wasn't a way for him to see the full extent of the damage of course, but the outset looked good.

Wait – that hand couldn't be Echidna. There was fur.

Now _that_ was wishful thinking. It wouldn't be her.

Probably just some off-island specialist who was examining him, making sure he would pull through…or estimating the time he had left. He was powerless for the second time in a very short while – a feeling he was rapidly becoming used to. Without his senses there was no way to understand what was happening, or communicate with the others. His chaos pool was still far from accessible, and would likely be so until recovery was complete.  
Wait…he could touch. If the person holding his wrist was talking, he would be able to detect what they were saying if he concentrated…and nothing. Wishful thinking, really. Clutching at straws.

The hand shifted, then let go of him, moving away across the room almost silently. Pressing his hand to the soap dispenser at the end of the bed and rubbing it into his hands, he turned to the only other occupant of the room, his voice hushed, inaudible if not for the otherwise complete, dead silence of the room.

"A good diagnosis. We're lucky he's alive at all." He looked down at the bed again. "It's nothing short of a miracle that he is doing as well as he is. We should count ourselves lucky that I was on the island."

"Right. Lucky." Somehow, impossibly, the other voice was even quieter, and still audible.

"You may not like me, young lady, but at the minute I'm the best chance this boy has of surviving."

"I know just as much as you do – I made the diagnosis, I told you everything that needed to be done. I could do all of this without your help."

"No, you couldn't." The male replied, stroking his muzzle with one hand. "I know that you took a medical degree, I know you completed your biological studies course, but I also know that they never awarded you your joint doctorate because you ran off to join the Freedom Fighters. You're a smart girl, smarter than that academy had seen in a long while, but you aren't officially qualified. You might be able to perform the same work I can, but I'm the only one who can get through the paperwork and red tape to actually perform the procedure."

He paused, then moved over to the wheelchair holding the only other person in the room. "I know how good you are. That's why I trusted your diagnosis. I know you're good enough to do this without me, and I'm not the one concerned about the paper that says it. If they let you do this without the papers, I wouldn't have had to interfere."

"Can't you just tell them that?"

"It wouldn't make a difference. I could tell all the doctors that you were better suited that I, but their hands would be tied without the paperwork."

He lowered himself to one knee so that he could look level into her eyes. "My niece, once this operation has succeeded, I'll make sure they know it was done on your recommendation. You still have your college qualification, so they will understand that nothing held you back except the government. That'll score you some points."

"I don't want any 'points'. I want Tails to recover, because god knows someone has to." The younger vixen met her uncle's gaze with iron determination. "I ran out on my final exam because there was a war going on and people needed my help. When your blood is dripping into the ground from a lacerated leg wound you don't worry if someone has the paper or not, you only care if they can patch you back together. When your lung has been punctured by a bullet and is filling with blood, you don't want officials bickering about who is qualified to do it, you want someone to get their hands in there and start draining it before you drown in your own vital fluids."

The elder flinched. She had changed since they had last spoken.

"Fiona, why are you-" She cut him off, again.

"Because," she replied, looking first at her uncle and then at Tails, "I took the doctorate's tests three years earlier than everyone else. I excelled in the field of medicine and biology not because I wanted to look good, but because I wanted to keep people alive. Fix him, I don't fucking care who knows who made the diagnosis. Just _fix him._"


	8. Communication Failure i

Prowling through the corridors in Robotnik's base, Metallix could feel his code changing. His initial goal was being reworked by the hand of his creator, the end product manipulated as new events transpired and his knowledge furthered. For the robot, it was the closest thing he could feel to pain. His mind being changed as he moved affected him in ways he could not describe; his movements were slowed, his reactions dulled and senses confused. Even his mind, normally able to act with a cold calculation beyond comprehension, was also fragmented, ideas not fitting together as they would normally.

So he wandered through the halls, his almost-skeletal form lending his form to one that stalks its prey, but in truth he could not call upon a name for his destination.

He knew, he was to go somewhere. Even now he was being told where that would be, but he could not yet understand it. All his overclocked processor could understand at the current time was that he had to be somewhere, and so it moved him. Aimless.

_There._

A location – suddenly clear in his mind's eye and already being plotted into his augurs. A patch of jungle, part marshland, largely worthless logically. But his master had encoded the commands into his system and it was now his goal – no matter his thought on the matter, he was driven to it now. He had to will to resist, nor did he want to. His master's will was his to obey, not by decision but by design and creation. Not Robotnik, no…the one who had spawned the idea, the idea had traced the many fates laid out to that master, and then had been written into being through sheer force.

He did not know why or how, but he knew his presence was integral to guiding the timelines toward the strand his master deemed correct. He could not be sure his presence would surely make it so, but now…he had orders to obey.

He reversed his direction on one heel, spinning to stalk back the way he became, the purpose in his stride no longer false and now with a true meaning and direction. The manipulation over and done with, and his full processing power and intelligence awakened. His cold calculation of events reasserted itself on a willing mind, and now he was free to decide how he would fulfil his master's wishes.

That decided, he could take his leave. This base of operations held nothing of value to him, save a base to recharge his more conventional weaponry with. Otherwise there was little need to return – if circumstances were willing, he could spend no time here at all. The chaos drive had no means of recharging and to his knowledge was supplied directly by Chaos himself, until such a time as his usefulness had passed. He could survive without Robotnik…but he could still see the uses of having a static base.

Opening his short-range communications, he allowed the flood of binary chatter to sift through his data cores, searching for anything meaningful, finding naught but the incessant string of alert messages, keeping all the robots in the base aware of where the others were. But…now that was interesting. An encrypted external call by his most esteemed host. He had made an agreement that he would not interfere with the other's matters, but there was only his word on that and even its intrinsic value was minimal. He had no reason to make deals with Robotnik; not ones he had to keep anyway.

Now was not the time to decode it, though he briefly perused the code, concluding in a moment that while the encryption was solid, it was not beyond his reach. It would be interesting to see what the good Doctor had been up to using such a heavy sequence of coding…and to an external source as well.

* * *

He was not the most adept at emotion or feelings or personality, but he hadn't been far wrong with his self-diagnosis. His near-comatose state was indeed partly the result of the Anarchy energy breaking down his biological structure and having him literally fall apart. Only his adept-enhanced physiology had kept him alive and in such good condition. Indeed, only the rapid healing his link to chaos afforded him his life at the current time.

His diagnosis wasn't entirely right though. He had missed something that Fiona had noticed.  
"His deterioration isn't entirely down to Anarchy energy. It isn't just a foreign body of energy you're dealing with in there." She told her uncle, watching he and his team work in the surgical room, separated by four inches of reinforced glass, he hand clamped around the call button to let her speak directly to those within.

Silas lifted his head from the tray of tools to look out at her. "What do you mean?"

"He's been pushing himself for years." Even through the microphone, the shake in her voice was evident. "If Sonic's right, he's been damaging himself since he was eleven. I don't think he meant to, but he's put himself through stress and pressure and combat that even a chaos adept shouldn't be able to endure without rest. He's gone above and beyond even his level of endurance several times just while I've been around."

The surgeon sighed heavily, looking at what he had to work with. Contrary to their apparently ungainly hands, the Echidna had one of the best medical systems in the country. The tools he had were top class, able to construct and deconstruct on an almost molecular level if necessary. The sheet covering the boy was coated with a thin veneer of painkillers and sedatives, serving to bolster the effects of the anaesthetic administered beforehand. The team he was working with were specialist surgeons who dealt with extreme cases like this. Even so, there was only so much they would be able to do. No body could be restored to its prime with damage like this. If the damage was long-term as well as inflicted by foreign bodies, very little would be retrievable without a miracle.

"If the long-term damage is extensive, there is very little we can do." He muttered, almost to himself, his eyes returning to his niece. "We can at least patch up the unnatural damage and let that heal, but we can do very little to long-term natural wear and tear. We can do a little, but…surgery won't fix that."

"I know." She met his gaze again.

"When he gets out of here, make sure he gets rest. He needs time off or damage like that will never heal properly. We'll do what we can here, and then I'll leave him in your hands. He'll need expert care even after this, and I don't think you'd want anyone else filling that role, would you?"  
She dropped her gaze from his, unwilling to talk about the subject, at least for the time being.

"This is the best I can offer, Fiona. I can see your infatuation with him, and for that he'll trust you."

He finished softly, turning away from her, glancing around at the others there with him. "Are we all ready? We all know what we're doing? Good. This boy has gone through literal hell and my niece has gone above her calling to make sure he survived the ordeal. Let's not waste this chance to bring someone back from the brink."

* * *

The Mannequin shoved the door open, heavy footfalls announcing his arrival in the silent laboratory. No heads turned to look and no voice inquired as to his business, for there were none to do so. This was not the more public laboratory Rotor and the other scientists worked in, or the still populated – though sparsely – chaos shield facility, this was the personal lab of Tails himself. The Mannequin had reasoned that if his blueprint had access to this place, he should as well. While the other was otherwise indisposed, he would be fulfilling the same role, so he needed the same resources.

And oh, they were here. The lack of organisation had turned the handful of whitewall rooms into a shining carpet of materials on every surface. The floor was strangely clear in comparison to the overloaded desks and worktops, and as such the robot had no trouble weaving through the assortment, his eyes taking in and analysing every little detail.

Quickly within the confines of the city he had found himself growing restless. Sally had proven useless in providing him with work befitting his station, treating him more like a glorified heavy-goods delivery boy than a combat android. He was not desperate nor was he conniving enough to create a battle, but he needed a way to scour the forest with his own senses. He had been built to withstand and quell conflict, and if he was not directed to it by his peers, he would seek it out himself.

Perhaps the work Tails had been doing here was not purposed for surveillance, but there was a wealth of raw materials that he could draw upon here, to bend to his will, whether or not they were intended for it. With this he could perform his own surgery; he could upgrade himself, unfettered by the constraints Nicole and the walrus lived by. He was designed and built with Tails in mind – he could feel it within his circuits, within his programs, within his weapons. But he was not Tails. He thought differently, and felt differently. He would not be subject to the same rules because he was not the same person.

He lifted one clawed hand, tracing it over the intricate handiwork littering the desks with a care that belied the weight of even one hand. Even as a robot he was struck by a sense of awe at what his other self had achieved. He had felt the technology surrounding him as he was created, felt it running through the city proper and into the countryside…in the air, in the water…the technology Tails had created was everywhere.

Now he could see how they were different. He was organic – his mind was the product of random processes that made thought, his mind had gone through errors and then corrected them. That was how he created. The Mannequin's mind was the product of constant, repetitive processes creating correct results immediately. It would be interesting to see what he could create himself. If anything, progress would be made faster. He operated more efficiently, after all.

But, first things first…he had to satisfy his warlike nature. For that he needed to upgrade his scanners. He began to cast his eye around, mind running through the list of materials he was sure he had located within the lab already. Mercury…magnesium…aluminium…iron…all within reach. It was just a little internal modification – an adjustment to his short-range auspices.

His hands moved out, plucking from the piles small pieces of fused metal and circuitry, originally purposed for computers, communicators, and even a trigger mechanism. He worked with a methodical determination, thin blades built to decapitate instead carefully dismantled the delicate technology, revealing the sum of the constituent parts to him, and he selected all he needed.  
The plates on his shoulder clicked aside softly, showing only a bare fragment of his inner self, a long thin spire of valuable metals.

Working almost entirely by the schematics he had, he carefully teased apart the little transmitter, feeling his scanners splutter and glitch as he took apart the hardware. A moment later he isolated It from his system. He didn't want to risk electrical shortage already.

The new components went in, a slightly longer antenna and an additional storage unit. The moment he was sure both were attached he reactivated the system, and shut down all external input. His optics, audio receptors and short-range radar stopped taking in data.

Without the constant stream of raw data he was free to open up the storage bank that he had just installed, and went to work programming it, installing software that would make the radar more efficient and increase the range tenfold. In theory.

Of course, it wouldn't be a conventional radar either – a sensitive sonar equivalent was now constructing a perpetually-updating image of the world around him whenever it was out of range of his optics. Large amounts of this incoming data he would filter out of course, to preserve space, but his battlefield awareness would be extraordinary…As the rest of his senses came online he staggered forwards, this new degree of vision stunning him for a moment. One hand shot out to steady himself, clamping down on one of the worktops. The metal warped in his hand, his servos crushing it as he let control slip. His common vision blurred and fogged for a brief instant as the coding integrated with the rest of his software and he mentally adjusted it as he moved. Stepping slowly he exited the lab, his hands testing his balance until he felt confident enough to walk as he had before. He hadn't been prepared for the sudden awareness it had granted him, and this had been his first mistake. He couldn't expect to get everything first try, he reasoned, especially if it involved his own software.

For a moment his processor almost overloaded, the volume of data streaming through him pushed it to its limit, and he blacked out, his non-operational form collapsing against the side of the worktop and sliding to the floor with a screech. By default, his system began formatting itself to save space and processing power, overwriting areas of his memory cores to more efficient versions.

Nicole found him, minutes later, during a routine check of the palace and surrounding area. Her body materialised, clothed in an ebon-coloured dress, crouching over his crumpled form.

"Oh dear…what have you done to yourself…" She worried in a soft, scared voice, genuine concern that already he'd pushed himself too far. Her arms went around him, lifting him from the floor as if his weight meant nothing – in truth it did, to a construct made of light – taking him away into the adjoining room, where he had first been constructed.

Carefully she lay him flat on the floor, her hand slowly tracing down his chestplate. Her touch awakened auto-reactive plates on the artificial skin, and the centre of his stomach irised open, revealing a gyrating column of red bars. "Oh dear…" she muttered to herself. "That isn't going to work. An overheated core already…looks like you'll be getting that upgrade." She sighed, standing again, the room reacting to commands issued from her central core. A cage opened in the wall, revealing a capsule no larger than her head, simply a shell of matt-grey lead.

While she had been designing the Mannequin, she had constructed two additional processing units, one was like the others…she'd have to install this anyway, to kick-start his system. But if whatever he had done was already pushing his processor to its limit, installing another one would fare no better, or a best give him just enough room to operate. The second core, an auxiliary core, on the other hand, would give him the power he needed, but she had plenty of reservations about installing it. It could effectively double his processing power, accelerating his decision-making to the speed that in an organic it would seem reckless and thoughtless. His mind would be faster – if not smarter – than Tails.

Even as a non-organic herself, she was faced with the moral and ethical dilemma: _Is this right?_

Could she trust herself to put a mind this powerful into an artificial being even she couldn't predict, that was new, that no-one but her really trusted yet? The other Freedom Fighters trusted her because her mind, created by a completely random glitch in a system, was born in a similar way and ran almost identically to an organic brain, with a few additional boons, ones which the group had accepted with appropriate restrictions.

Again, she was scared. To reactivate the Mannequin she'd either have to remove whatever he'd done to make it this way, or add this auxiliary core. Either one would violate someone's trust, and both were circumstances she didn't enjoy. Furthermore, if she removed the Mannequin's upgrades, she didn't know how much it had meshed with his system, and therefore she had no clue how much damage she would do.

"Sally." She asked, her avatar flickering into existence in the princess' office. "I have a dilemma."

Sonic was there in the office too, lounging in one of the guest chairs with a sheaf of papers in one hand. He seemed decidedly bored at the whole thing, but his eyes were determined to see through…whatever he was doing. He had said he would help out with the paperwork and the administration while Tails was away. Things still weren't as smooth as they would have been with the kitsune around…but his aid had certainly been appreciated, and provided at least a moral boost for the beleaguered princess.

"What is it this time, Nicole?" Even with the support, her eyes were ringed by dark circles of stress and fatigue.

"The Mannequin has overloaded his processor. He's been making changes to his hardware…at least, that's what I can see. I have a couple of solutions to reactivate him…one could cause permanent damage, if I attempt to remove the additional hardware, and the other would supercharge his processor. He'd be extremely efficient but I fear…uncontrollable."

"There are no other solutions?"

"None other than the construction of a completely new Mannequin, and with our resources for a similar undertaking depleted, it would take a lot more time…"

"Go for it." Sonic smiled faintly, not looking up. "Nicky…" He would use that insufferable nickname, only he had the balls to. "If he gets even smarter, I'm not complaining. If he gets out of hand, one of us can deal with him. No biggie."

The lynx acknowledged Sonic's suggestion with a curt nod. "Princess?" She asked, still seeking Sally's own opinion.

"I'm with Sonic on this, Nicole. Giving him more power is a calculated risk, but it's either danger from the Mannequin, powerful but we know what it is, or danger from Robotnik hitting us harder than we can cope."

As one avatar received the commands, the other extracted the auxiliary core from its containment unit, still personally unsure of what she was about to do.

"I hope you're right." Nicole whispered to herself and to the two Mobians. "If you'll excuse me…" Her image flickered and faded, so only the one in the lab remained, holding the new processor, one with an overload bar like the others, and the other side ending in a serrated edge to allow it to slot over the others.

The installation was simple, the lynx simply pressing the new core over the others, and waiting for the soft hiss as the pressure clamps engaged over it, then the even quieter sound of plates sliding apart to allow contacts to touch and activate. Within the little piece of technology the cores began to move, powering up automatically to integrate themselves to his circuitry, and Nicole breathed deeply, shivering slightly with trepidation as her sensors registered power coursing to areas all over the mechanical kitsune's body.

She closed her eyes, but she saw him open his.

"Thank you, Nicole. Both for the increase in efficiency and my reactivation." She could see something had changed in him. His speech was more refined, clipped and courteous. Gone was the whispering of spite in his tone at the knowledge of his own fate, now...a sort of refinement, a nobility.

"Now I'm in full control of my new augurs, I would advise you alert the remaining Freedom Fighters. There is a large robotic legion deploying to a location within the forest a short distance from Knothole. I have no knowledge of its intent, and I do not know if its intent is lethal or simple coincidence. Preliminary scans do suggest that the force is sizeable and equipped with heavy armaments, once again I cannot say whether or not these weapons are openly hostile or for defensive procedures. Either way, I intend to take a look." He pushed himself to his feet, the plates on his stomach hissing shut again. "And I have a request. Please inform everyone I intend to go by the name 'Veracity'."

"Why the sudden change?"

"I liked the irony." The robot told her, moving away without waiting for a response. She was left wondering – what did he mean by _the irony_?

No time to wonder now.

"Sally, I'm sorry to interrupt again, but there's another problem that you need to hear about." Her avatar once again phased in with a soft buzz of noise, to find that nothing had changed in the scant minutes between visits. "The Mannequin has found something."

"Already? But you only just…even if you've already activated him, how has he-?" The squirrel-princess was stunned.

"He's found a legion of Robotnik's robots moving in on a patch of forest apparently nearby. He didn't specifically state they were Robotnik's…but I don't know who else they would belong to. He's gone to investigate, and he asked me to tell the rest of you. I would have done so anyway…but not because of the legion. If you go and look yourselves, take care. The Mannequin has changed…he's calling himself Veracity. Truth."

Sally shook her head and stood up, rubbing her eyes. "A name isn't enough to cause problem. We'll have to find out how right he is. Sonic, find Telera, Nicole, I'll need you to come as well. We're short-handed enough as it is."

Nicole hesitated a moment, then shook her head. "Sally, I'll take a contingent of Onslaughts in your place."

"No, Nicole, this is my duty." The princess moved round her desk, reaching out to gently move Nicole from her path. The lynx caught her hand before it had moved.

"Sally, I may be a computer, but I'm not yours to command. I can see you're stressed even without my senses detecting that you're on the verge of collapsing. We're short-staffed I know, but I have my legions. I'll go personally – they'll be under my complete control. Tails pushed himself to the limit and he's paying the price for it. We don't want you to be in a similar position."

Sally tried to shrug her off. "Nicole, don't command me! I lead the Freedom Fighters and I'm the princess of the Acorn Kingdom. Even if I am tired, I don't have a choice."

"You're the princess of the Acorn Kingdom, and by law you have command over all within the kingdom." Nicole agreed. "But I'm not a Mobian. I'm a computer. I'm a construct that technically does not exist because theoretically I cannot exist, and now I'm ordering you to take some rest. We can handle this without you for one day, Sally."

The two of them locked eyes, Sally, tired, stressed and worried, Nicole, worried, stressed and determined.

Then she shrugged her hand away.

"Sal, listen to her." She whirled to come face-to-face with Sonic. "Charging in with complete disregard for my own health is my job, not yours."


	9. Communication Failure ii

Things had changed, so soon. So suddenly.

Sonic. Tails. Sally. Fiona. Telera. Retis. Lupin. Amy.

So quickly that list had dwindled, their numbers never replenished in an unspoken honour to the fallen Retis and the missing Lupin. To Tails and Fiona, who would be returning soon.

Even Sonic, who lived in the moment, who lived his life as a blur, felt everything had changed too soon.

Trees came and disappeared around him, passing through the forest with no more of a presence than a ghost on a haunt. His mind was empty, his body operating on fine-tuned instinct. He was allowing himself to forget. For a few moments, he was letting himself be who he was before. Once again, he was running from his problems. As long as he ran fast enough, they wouldn't catch him.

His shadow followed, high overhead, cast by _Deus._

The fighter/transport cast barely a shadow in itself, the nimble, AI-controlled jet slipping through the air effortlessly with Nicole at the helm. She was the ship, her software integrated into it and overriding the standard construct within.

_Deus_ was another piece of Tails' legacy. A sleek arrowhead design, there was so much packed into the frame that it was a wonder that there was still enough space to fit the Freedom Fighters within. The surface was covered in an advanced form of active camouflage, bending light around itself to become nigh on invisible to the naked eye, or even standard optical sensors. Housed within the wings was a squadron of Onslaught robots, brought along as she had promised. The tip was fitted win an advanced Electronic Jammer, creating a field around the ship that disrupted any attempts to lock on, making all but direct fire much of a waste of time. It meant that the ship itself could not lock on through its own field, but Nicole didn't mind. She could make the calculations to make the shots herself. Here, she played god.

Within, the few remaining team members waited in solemn silence.

Veracity spoke to no-one, fitted within one of the support harnesses for the sake of saving space, his optics were dulled and his head slumped. There was no doubt he was active, but he was unresponsive. Whatever he was thinking about, he did not want to be disturbed. He wanted to think alone.  
Telera sat across from him, her pistol cradled in two hands. His silence was not the same as her own, she could feel it. She was silent because words did not come. No words passed from Veracity because he did not think they were worth his notice. The weapon she held and the weapon he was held little differentiate between them – except perhaps, the one she held knew the meaning of morality.

She was keenly aware of the silence, and her own contribution to it.

She glanced to her side, where Amy waited in her own form of silence.

The hedgehog had changed, she realised, in ways that were so infinitely complex and multifarious that until now, they had been all but invisible. Her hot-headed attitude towards life had been tempered by both guilt and fear, and in her closed eyes there was renewed fire.

Before she would have held the hammer tightly, eyes filled with fire and ice for the fight ahead. Now, that version of her felt like a distant memory. The hammer rested with the head against the floor, her hands pressing softly against the hilt to stop it falling.

Her eyes were closed, her lips moving without sound.

She was praying.

The tigress smiled knowingly. Amy was terrified, really scared. Because for once, she was fighting this war herself. She wasn't just backing Sonic up. She was being her, she was fighting in her own right.

The hedgehog had been absent from the world for the past few days. She had shut herself away from the others, thinking, changing, growing. The pain she'd been through and the others had been through had smashed an iron nail into her skull. Reality hadn't come with age. It had come when she had really hurt those close to her, and it had come, moving faster than Sonic could.

She had repainted the hammer, trading red and gold for deep black, the head painted a dark coppery colour and the haft of polished steel. The weapon marked a change in her personality.

There was more bulk on her frame than usual. Tightened over her thin form was another of Tails' inventions. It had been something he had created specifically for the hedgehog-girl – a combat chassis, an armoured suit that bolstered her strength.

She was taking the fight seriously. She had never worn it before.

"One minute until drop. We're going in hot, everyone." Nicole's voice snapped through the single speaker suspended above their heads. "Robotnik's already got set up down there, so we're fighting from the moment we hit the ground."

Amy's eyes flicked open, sharp and cold. "Sonic, what does it look like from down there?" She muttered into her comm, fitted snug behind her ear.

The delay was minimal. "Big. Kinda like one of those half-finished circuits Tails leaves lying around. Lots of big flat places for you guys to land on." The connection broke for a moment in a wash of static, a high-pitched whistling singing over the noise for a moment.

"You alright down there?"

More static, the his voice broke through again. "Yea, yea, still kicking. I think they saw me." Another burst of static. Another explosion ringing in his ears. Heavy-calibre fire digging up dirt and spraying him with sawdust as he bounced from cover to cover. For a moment the fire stopped, and he paused behind one of the remaining trees, adjusting the HUD on his eye as he heard the familiar clunking of ammunition packs being changed.

He stole a glance at what was shooting at him, and got a look at a squad, blocky construction with four stabilising legs with two large barrels mounted on top, before he ducked back and the air where his head had been was filled with lead. "Just portables." He grinned. "Botnik hasn't finished getting set up yet. Looks like our timing was dead on."

"Mark us a drop point." Nicole ordered. With Sally recuperating and Tails out of action, the AI was serving as team strategist. "I'll clear the anti-air."

"Gotcha." The hedgehog said, bursting from behind cover. The guns opened up against him, pumping streams of lead into the space between him and his target. Still, Robotnik's technology couldn't keep up with such a totally unpredictable target. Running now more than ever before, Sonic was no better a target than a handful of air. Bullets plastered the scenery and he charged through it all, jinking and strafing through alternating streams of heavy fire.

He passed the defensive line with the turrets lagging a few meters behind, whirring frantically in an attempt to keep pace with the blue blur now among them. Sonic kept his pace for a moment or two more, then snapped to the side, stopping abruptly behind a large red container. "Robotnik, you don't know what a real fight is." He allowed himself a smirk. After what they'd been through, this was going to be easy.

"Marking the drop." He muttered with another smirk, tossing in his hand a small orb, the size of an eyeball. He inspected it for a moment longer, thumbed the button on top and lobbed it ahead into the cloud of dust being kicked up by prefab buildings as they crushed trees and flattened the landscape.

"What the hell is he doing down here…" Sonic mused, staying in the shadow of the silo for a moment longer. "This isn't right…" His question was answered a second later, as the silo behind him began to whir loudly, a high shriek rising above even the sound of landing buildings. The earth beneath him churned and disappeared, the hedgehog leaping forward to avoid being dragged below the surface.

Behind him, the entire steel silo began to disappear beneath the ground.

"Nicole, you'd better be getting this. Looks like the dirt did something he didn't like." The hedgehog boosted away, further through the buildings,  
"Yea, I've got it. Start breaking turrets and we'll find what our dear doctor friend is doing here." Her processor hummed and a socket on the underside of _Deus_ split open like an eye, exposing a thick, stubby barrel on a ball-joint. As they passed over where the beacon sat humming, the little turret picked up the heat signatures of several of its armoured targets.

Swivelling slightly to lock onto the first, it spat once, a single bullet the size of a Mobian's fist shot out, splitting the air with a whistle and a contrail of steam, knifing into the hard casing of the first portable turret. The driving momentum of the shell cracked hard against the turret casing and punched through into it, and the concentrated ring energy inside exploded violently.

The thick steel stopped the explosion, but not after everything inside was reduced to liquid metal. A plume of bright flame flared from the barrel, and then died to a thin wisp of ashen smoke as the process was repeated again and again, clearing a narrow landing cone for the Freedom Fighters.  
The cannon folding back in on itself, the aircraft whirled nimbly around, arcing back over the landing site and then slicing skyward into the midday sun. A hatch at the back irised open, and the three team members simply dropped out of it, towards the muddy, patchwork base below.

Compression fields hurriedly strapped over their combat gear fired into action, pumping out a stream of compressed air into the space in front of them, balancing the onrush of air with a blast of its own, their speed of descent quashed dramatically.

As the fields kicked in, Veracity sailed down past them, his own speed unabated. He hadn't donned one of the compressor packs, and he hit the ground at full-pelt, digging himself into a crater. His armoured, augmented chassis absorbed the damage almost without coincidence, near-microscopic stress fractures registering for a moment and then ignored as he surged from the crater, his sensors taking in the scene with a glance. Before the two falling Freedom Fighters could see him he was moving, drifting through the large bulks in search for the artificial intelligence he had encountered earlier.

Telera landed after him, rolling to kill her momentum against the softer earth, silently thankful for the turned ground Veracity had kicked up, then she was moving, sprinting professionally to cover in the shade of one of the faceless boxes, feeling along it for any sort of hatch or door.

Amy's landing was skewed. Before, her airdrops had been done unencumbered, but she had failed to account for the extra gear and the wind dragged her off course. Not far, but enough to ensure that instead of hitting the ground like the others, she slammed into the curved roof of one of the boring cylinders. The suit reacted and servos pressurised to stop her legs breaking from the impact, but she still rolled and bounced from the juddering roof, hitting the ground on her side.

It hurt. At least nothing was broken.

_Where were the combots?_

The question forced her to her feet. Her skin stung from the impact, but she was alive, lucid, and well enough to fight on. Not even a single one in sight or sound. Just the groaning of the silos disappearing into the ground.

"Guys…there's nothing." She gulped. "No combots. Doesn't Robotnik usually have loads of them? Where are they?"

Veracity's voice came through first, soft and almost assuring. "Many of the containers seem to have little internal structure. Their thickness prevents my sensors from seeing within, but I can surmise that approximately half of these are simply storage units. This indeed was the prime moment for attack. I expect they will be largely offline. Open one of the units and take a look. It will likely confirm my suspicions. While you do, I will attempt to uncover the centre of this operation."

Veracity disappeared from the coms as quickly as he appeared, leaving no room for argument or question. The hedgehog frowned in irritation, then snapped and smashed the black hammer against the metal wall beside her, the servos in her arm now augmenting her strength and those in her legs bracing her for the strike. The armoured steel warped and cracked under the impact, but it did not break. She drew back the hammer. Struck again.

The entire structure groaned as it was twisted and ruptured at this one, tiny point, a pipe within splitting and spraying steam from the crack she had made. Superheated water hissed from the gap, sloughing pencil-thin scratches in her armour, and she groaned, both from the pain of her armour heating up and the tediousness of having to break Robotnik's ugly contraptions.

She continued to batter away at it, however, battering and cracking pipes and thick pistons and bundles of wires running through the wall. There were no defences, no guns or swarms of construction scarabs. Nothing. Metal fell away almost without consequence, black oil and fuel spilling from ruptured fuel lines…but even that was just a pitiful trickle. Whatever fuel had been in them had been used to transport it to the location.

Something jutted out of the remaining obstacle before she could finish battering her way in. A rod of shining bronze with a sharpened tip, protruding gracelessly from a rip in the armour. It stopped short of her face and she stumbled back a couple of steps in surprise. It didn't look like a weapon.  
"Can someone get over here? It doesn't look like combots that Robotnik was transporting…" She spoke into the mic, her sentence barely fading before Sonic skidded to a stop next to her.

"Oh, I dunno." He sniggered, inspecting the metal. "Maybe chrome-dome just has a hard-on. The doc is pretty fucked up, you don't know what he'd do to those bots. Still, seems a waste of copper, or what looks like copper. Give this thing another whack and see what falls out."

"And if another one of those things comes out? That was close. You do it."

"Alright…" the blue Mobian shrugged, grinning at her caution, spinning slightly and taking a couple of sprite steps from the sheer surface. "Get a bit of a run up…"

"You're just going to run at it?"

"Duh- Ames, what's going on?" Sonic stopped, crossing his arms, the large construction forgotten for a moment. "New outfit, new paint-job, new attitude by the looks of things. What's the biz?" This was getting on his nerves. She'd just walked out of her room with this new get-up on, hands on this freshly-painted new hammer and gotten on the plane without so much as a glance at him. In other days she would have been making him promise and double-promise he'd be alright.

"I felt like it." She snapped, swinging the hammer onto her shoulder and placing the other hand on her hip. "Got a problem?"

"Ya felt like it? No shit. I get up and go for a run because I feel like it. I nab a coke from a fridge because I feel like it. You don't just get a repaint and start wearing elite combat gear because you feel like it."

"Picked a fine time to point it out." She swung the hammer from her shoulder again, thumping the head into the ground and stalking over to him.

"we've got something to be doing, Sonic. Have you forgotten?" A gloved hand jabbed him in the chest. "Complain about my dress-sense when we get home."

"Alright! Geez…trust you to sound like my mother. Okay, but I'm not forgetting this." He turned back to the wall. "Ya can't side-line the star of the show."

"I really couldn't care about the _show_, Sonic. Hurry up and hit the wall."

His eyes met hers, cold and unyielding, his mouth opening slightly with the beginnings of a retort…and then shutting again. She was right about it. She was different, and she was focussing on the task at hand instead of him. For that, at least, he owed her the courtesy of a little patience. He'd still ask her again though.

Setting his stance he charged, breaking into a run directly towards the wall of steel. A second of the light reflecting off the surface and then he hit it, chaos-hardened spines tearing apart the prefab structure, metal twisting round with the force of the blow. A ripple of chaos energy thudded out into the metal in front of him, ripping a wound and providing him with a solid enough wall of energy to ricochet off – a wise move, as several more copper rods fired from the space, driving themselves into the ground instead of the hedgehog.

Amy simply raised an eyebrow in silent victory.

"So, any new theories on what he's doing here?" Amy asked into her comm, enjoying her momentary victory over both Sonic and Veracity.

"Several. From the contents of the containers I have opened, it is likely he is constructing a forward base, quite likely equipped with high-power observation and monitoring equipment to attempt to locate Knothole. Considering his proximity he would have a significantly greater chance of locating the city. Considering the high amount of conductive metals within the containers the other most likely possibility would be either some sort of electromagnet, or a form of tesla coil. Both possibilities have a high percentile chance of being wrong, however, as the terrain would provide little use for such constructions."

"So you're saying it's a big lookout post?"

"To use such a simple term, yes. He intends to have it heavily guarded. Three battalions of light assault bots are encroaching on our position, and another two battalions of line combat robots are approaching behind."

"There's no guards." Amy cut in. "Wouldn't he have any here to begin with if it's so important?"

"This has likely played to his advantage. Now we are all within, he will be able to surround us. He miscalculated the time of our arrival, however, and we have time to prepare. The light assault units are primarily equipped with jetpacks, and thus will attempt to remain airborne. Our limited numbers means that only myself and _Deus_ are prepared for aerial combat, so I would advise using the cover given by these construction modules to draw them in close, and force them to land. I will leave you to decide how best to go about that – I have located a key target. I will be unable to maintain radio contact while neutralising it."

"You seem incredibly confident." The voice registered in Veracity's audio receptors before his sensor array was able to breach his target's cloaking unit. "I can surmise you have a plan calculated and stored for my demise, and the aftermath, already."

"That is of no interest to you." Veracity spun on the spot, searching for the source of the voice.

"Perhaps. But if you are to die, wouldn't you rather have someone who can carry on your plan?"

"You are my target, not my ally. Reveal yourself and name yourself."

"As you wish." The voice laughed, then faded. Veracity waited for long moments, content to give his opponent time to reveal himself, or to run away.  
Then something very heavy collided with his back, forcing him to the ground. He felt powerful hydraulics piston against his limbs, pinning him. "I am Metallix. You are my target. You are to be eliminated before you cause further harm. So is the will of my master."

"Your master chose poorly." Veracity began to twist his arms down, his own strength overpowering that of his adversary with a juddering force. It became a battle of strengths, a battle Metallix knew he was poorly equipped to win. He drew back his right arm, freeing one of Veracity's limbs but allowing his pulse battery to activate in his palm, targeting the prone robot's optic stem running along the base of the neck. The processor and power modules were too well defended, but if he could blind him, he would have an advantage.

He never got to fire. His arm now free, the robot vulpine threw his arm up towards the one holding him down, and fired a controlled burst from the fusion cannon secreted in his arm. The blast would have been able to put a hole through four feet of reinforced steel, easily strong enough to crack Metallix's armour, provided the robot was still there.

The cobalt humanoid had detected the immense energy build up moments earlier and swung away before Veracity had fired. It robbed him of his chance to gain a key advantage, but at least allowed him to continue the fight. Though neither his processor nor core were located in his head, such damaged would have required immediate shutdown, or risking compromising more delicate areas. Now he backpedalled, putting distance between him and his target, ion thrusters built into his feet lifting him a few feet into the air, processor buzzing to analyse the change in scenario and to formulate a new plan. Veracity spun on the ground, coming to his feet with one clawed hand dug into the dirt, the other still humming with power as the cannon prepared for a second shot.

[Immense energy signatures detected in armature. Foreign weaponry superior to local weaponry.]

As he suspected. If Robotnik had had his way, Metallix would be a weaponised behemoth quite capable of matching Veracity in terms of raw firepower. But his master had not had that in mind; his duty, his task to carry out was a far more delicately-planned one.

Metallix fired forward, once again closing the gap as his foe let loose with a second shot, a bright beam of energy cutting the air between them.  
[Barrage shield active. One-hundred percent.] The code had barely registered before the beam struck. For a moment his vision turned white and then greyed out, overloaded by the intense light, the damage flickering off a shield constructed out of chaos energy moments earlier.

[Error. Error. Barrage shield overloaded. Recharging.] The blast had taken it offline. He'd expected it to be powerful…but not that powerful. For now, it didn't matter. The shield had served his purpose and now the gap was closed, his claws striking sparks from Veracity's armoured torso. His momentum carried them both back against one of the massive containers, the force and weight of his strike denting and pitting the metal.

He felt the metal kitsune move against him, his fist thundering across his faceplate. The impact cracked the armoured glass over his optics, splitting his standard array of vision in two and sending him lurching to the side. He stumbled and spun, trying to keep Veracity in view.  
Scant inches separated their respective faces.

"Your master chose poorly."


	10. Communication Failure iii

"You're weak." Veracity's fist lashed out, ringing against the side of Metallix's head. The impact threw him sideways, putting yet another dent in one of the storage containers. The cobalt robot recovered instantly, his elbow driving into the steel to push himself from it, his free arm snapping into a firing position and loosing two bright bolts of energy from the battery in his palm. His aim was poor, his calculations made in half the time they should. Warning shots.

His opponent came on heedless, the shots spattering off his torso armour, barely leaving scorch marks.

"Pathetic." He surged forward, his claws digging into the steel container with Metallix rolling out of the way. As his sensors registered his opponent's escape he ripped sideways, tearing a gouge along the container shell, drawing from it a painful screech which both combatants swiftly omitted from their audio arrays.

"Useless." He gave chase, engines kicking in on his feet, the sudden wash of heat leaving streaks of charred grass to mark his takeoff. He was on Metallix in moments, the cannons in his arms charging for a new shot. The cobalt robot retaliated in kind, spinning on his heels and dropping to the ground, firing up with both batteries as Veracity passed overhead.

His aim was perfect this time. His moment of retreat had given him time to fine-tune the calculations needed for this shot, and as his target passed, the shots struck his faceplate, the intense light given off overloading Veracity's optics.

Operating under command failsafes, the moment his sight was gone, so was his thrust. The jets on his feet cut abruptly, not allowing him to continue flight while he could not see where he was going. His new radar suite was powerful, but his processor judged the margin of error not worth the risk.  
"Blind." Metallix finally retorted, spinning on the ground and coming back to his feet.

"Uncontrolled." He broke into a run, crossing the space between himself and the fallen flier before the other could recover, diving forward and taking him off his feet, once again slamming them both into the ground. "Impetuous." Lifting both of his hands together above his head, he brought them down on the back of Veracity's skull-plate with enough force to create a crack, the impact registering in the prone robot's sensors. He brought his hands above his head again, thinking to crush the optic cable and render his foe permanently blind. As he brought them back down, something stabbed into his back, his awareness module beeping frantically as it registered one of Veracity's pointed tails gouging a hole in Metallix's back armour.

He rolled sideways from him, hands grasping and missing the armoured spike, flicking out of his reach once again, with both robots coming back to their feet.

"An admirable tactic." The metal kitsune could have laughed. "Take out my optics and give yourself a substantial advantage. Even an intense burst like that is only enough to disable them for approximately four-point-nine-three seconds. You have miscalculated once again."

"Wrong." Replied the other. "I have made no miscalculation."

Veracity didn't deign to reply. Suddenly his mind was working again – if this was a feint, it was a wasted one. Therefore there must be some ulterior scheme that he had not yet realised.

Armoured hands crunched against his chest, claws digging in where the plates of his armour fitted together and lifting the kitsune from the ground. His moment's lapse had given Metallix time; just enough to close the gap and get a firm grip on him. "Focus on me, Veracity. You have time to muse on my thoughts later."

Neither spoke for a moment, one suspended in the other's claws. "That depends on whether it is worth it."

"It is." The cobalt robot rumbled, a heavy, thumping sound coming through his speakers that Veracity assumed was laughter. "But your time runs short." Then the kitsune became aware of a building pressure in his chest cavity. "Your design is flawed, my adversary; both physically and mentally."  
It only took a moment for the immobile one to work out what Metallix was doing. The force in his claws had dug between the plates in his armour, and now he was crushing them, forcing open his torso.  
There wasn't much time. Veracity twisted in his grip, hands clamping around his aggressor's wrists. In one fluid motion he planted his feet against Metallix's chest and kicked off, using pure hydraulic force to rip the two of them apart. A warning flashed in front of his eyes as they separated, the claws that had dug into his armour ripping out, and taking thick fragments of armour with them.

"I felt that." He snapped as he landed, cursing his inability to grin. "Are you ready to fight back now?"

"I was waiting for you."

* * *

Scant moments after Veracity had given the warning, the scanners on-board _Deus_ had detected the incoming defensive force, and the nimble aircraft had wheeled in the air to face this new threat.  
"Sonic, Amy, Telera. I'm picking up the task force on my radar." Nicole said through the comm, jolting the trio on the ground into action. "Type Forty-twos and Legion Eighteen Combots, by the looks of things."

Once again, Sonic was the first to answer. "Eighteens? Those are the big ones, right? Sheesh, 'Botnik is going all out for this one."

"Looks that way, Sonic." Nicole replied, allowing herself a smirk within the confines of her programming. The hedgehog's easy-going attitude seemed to be all that was keeping the tiny group afloat. "The forty-twos are all flying independent, and I'm detecting several large signatures that are likely transport vessels for the eighteens. Light assault will try and stay out of the way, so you guys want me to take care of them, so you can have your fun with the Eighteens when they hit the ground?"

"And if there's too many?" Amy asked, the prospect of facing two legions of Robotnik's toughest line production models making her feel just a bit out of her league.

Nicole waited until a tell-tale shudder ran through the ship before replying. "If it proves too much for you to handle, my squad has just ejected. They'll be joining you down there. If they get overwhelmed, you've still got Sonic."

"And that's supposed to make me feel better?"

"If you've got a better plan, I'd love to hear it." The AI grumbled, a note of irritation creeping into her tone. "It's not like we're unused to fighting and winning battles where we're hopelessly outnumbered. You and Telera both have disruptor units fitted in your uniforms, so they'll have a hard time getting a lock on you. Sonic's fast enough to get out of the way and my Onslaught robots are to eliminate targets as a pair, to kill before they can be targeted. Veracity isn't answering, so this is all we've got. Deus and I can handle the Forty-twos, so you guys will be fine."

"Somehow, I'm not reassured."

_"Save the doom and gloom for later."_ Telera's artificial voice cut through, _"We haven't got time to get anyone else out here so it's us and them. Let's get this done now and argue the finer points of sound strategy later, when we haven't got Robotnik's armies breathing down our necks."_

"Solid copy, Tigress." Nicole breathed a sigh of relief, turning her attention to the weaponry aboard _Deus_.

As a fighter/transport, if you were to show _Deus_ to any military man, they'd glance at it and write it off as a death-trap for any on board, and likely then re-classify it as a guided missile. With the jamming field removing any chance of a lock-on weapon system and a control unit that responded to even the lightest touch, not even the most learned or veteran pilot could manage such a craft and survive the first flight.

Luckily, _Deus_ was not some air-force commission weapon, and Nicole wasn't just your average pilot. Housed within the craft's armoured skin was an auxiliary processing system, which simply augmented the artificial lynx's own processing speed. Indeed, she had based Veracity's additional processor on this same system, but the thing that had set them apart was that when she had created the _Deus_ control system, she had programmed it with combat in mind. It was built to do no more than keep track of targets, calculate distance and speed, and then assist her in taking the target out of the sky accordingly.

"Speed, eight-hundred miles-per-hour. Time to operation range…fifty seconds." She clucked to herself, checking everything on a quick mental list. "Still incognito, all systems look clear to go…You guys have got about two minutes until they hit you. I'm marking the transports on your displays."

A chorus of confirmations came back. "I'll knock out the forty-twos and then sweep back to provide aerial support. Give 'em hell, guys."

"Try and bring the ship back in one piece. I reckon Tails'll give you hell if ya don't." Sonic chuckled.  
"I've got this, Sonic." Nicole smiled to herself, and turned her attention fully to the control systems.  
Along the sleek, arrowhead front of the plane four vents slipped open, a bluish light humming to life within each one. Within were yet another variation of the fusion cannon, built to hurl a bolt of concentrated plasma at the target. Whereas weapons like the judgement rifle were primarily built to combat infantry, even armoured, the weapons on-board this craft were designed to punch one point as hard as they could. When knocking out a key power conduit could knock an aircraft out of the sky, hitting that one spot as hard as you could suddenly became very important.

Weapons with such a small area of effect would be next to useless against such small targets as Type Forty-Twos.

"Thirty seconds until operational rage." The lynx ticked off, counting down as the distance between her and her targets closed. "Enemy anti-air in range…now." As if on cue, giant, double-barrelled guns affixed to the bow of the transports swivelled on their axis, tracking her craft as she deactivated the stealth systems. She could have chosen to leave them on, but now they'd be targeting her instead of the ground forces.

"Come on…" She waited impatiently, for the moment to put her plan into effect.

In the air ahead of her, eighty barrels lit up with the bright flare of gunfire, heavy flak shells easily the size of a Mobian rocketing from their innards on pre-timed fuses.

As the first volley detonated spectacularly around her, clouds of black, brackish smoke washing over her craft, she came on, dauntless. As she'd predicted, the ship's jamming field had thrown off the targeting engines in the turrets, and while their aim was good…it wasn't good enough. Suddenly, _Deus_ jerked sharply down as a lucky shot gone awry glanced across the top of the left wing, scoring a mark on the armour and then exploding against the back of the plane. Shrapnel flew into the superheated jets that passed as engines. Much was incinerated, but a few lodged into the flaps regulating the speed, chipping and peeling bits of metal from the nimble craft.

"Okay, so I didn't account for that…" Nicole sighed. "Five seconds." She couldn't always get everything right. "Four, three, two…one."

As the countdown ended, her craft jerked and shot up, changing ninety degrees, engines screaming to cope with the sudden change in direction. Still, she wasn't worried. She knew the limits she could push _Deus_ to, and this was nowhere near the maximum stress it could take.

With the nose towards the heavens, the underbelly of the fighter exposed to the enemy fleet and with it…the bombardment cannon. It had been built with ground attack in mind, but a fusion ring compressed into a hard shell was still an invaluable weapon against larger airborne targets, like these transports. The cannon swivelled and spat, pumping out a slow and steady stream of shells, adjusting every two shots to target another of the massive anti-air cannons.

At this angle, _Deus_ presented a larger target to the fleet, but its current velocity and still small frame still kept it from being prime shooting. More flak exploded around her, lumps of metal digging into the armour and causing warning signals to appear in Nicole's code, ones that were quickly dismissed by the determined AI. She'd asked the command systems to respond to even minor fractures in hull integrity, but only so she'd be constantly aware of her situation.

"I've knocked out the transport forward defences. It should give you guys an edge. I'm priming the Thundershock – running silent."

She cut the radio; she cut all external feeds, in fact. All but the optics letting her see where she was going and, until she was realigned with the fleet, the radar. Once it was in her sights again, that too was disabled.

_Deus_ was equipped with a total of three weapon systems. The plasma cannons at the fore, making it a potent opponent in dogfights; the bombardment cannon, allowing it to fulfil a support role as bomber and even hold a candle to bigger and tougher ships like the transports…and the Thundershock, possibly the most dangerous weapon on-board, both to the intended victims and the ship itself.

In effect, it acted like a massive Electromagnetic pulse, generated by modifying the jamming field on the hull to burn out any active system within the pulse radius. This was a tried and tested method against Robotnik's forces, as each one was constantly emitting a locator signal for the Doctor to direct his forces. The disadvantage was that if _Deus_ had any systems that involved the external world active during the pulse, it would hit the ship itself as well. So, for the few crucial seconds during the Thundershock's activation, every external system bar the engines had to go offline.

Against such small and fragile targets, like the forty-twos, it would be a weapon of immense power.  
Safe within the armoured shell, the small craft knifed into the fleet vanguard, the legions of forty-twos all registering the now uncloaked vessel, but unable to do anything to stop it. They were equipped to be versatile air and ground troops – they were not suited to aerial combat against fast vehicles. Nonetheless weapons spun and fire spat from barrels, each and every one falling short, spiralling into the forest below.

"Eat this, bitches." Nicole snapped, the cameras flicking off as she punched in the code for the Thundershock. Around the ship, the jamming field flickered once, wavered, and died away. For a single moment the entire vessel was utterly defenceless, as helpless as a child within a pack of wolves. Then a roaring sonic shockwave rippled outwards, a massive burst of power from the ship's systems, followed by a crackling EMP field.

The closest to the craft were simply pounded to pieces by the shockwave, and those further from it began emitting wailing emergency calls along Robotnik's network as their system monitors informed them of cracks all over their armour, plates shattering and delicate internal components exploding in small puffs of magnesium and nickel.

The attack was timed to a logical perfection. As the call went out, nearly two legions of the three calling out for aid, they were engulfed by the follow-up, and the processors serving as their brains simply broke, falling apart under the intense flash of power coursing through them.

For some, this damage was physical – their processing units melted as they were exposed to the intense heat such power came with. For others, the damage was mental, and far more dangerous. For many, it simply corrupted their systems, leaving them without orders and with no real functions to speak of. Without any commands telling them how to function, they dropped from the sky into the forest, cracking on impact and any case being put out of operation. Some became convinced that their targets had become lodged in their chest cavity, and detonated spectacularly with in-built self-destruct sequences.

For a choice few, a rare few, they suddenly turned on their allies. The shockwave damaged their loyalty and targeting codes, flipping them on their head. Rockets and tracer fire lit up the sky as a handful of the forty-twos unleashed a salvo on the legion still flying, then dropping away into the forest to both escape from those who surrounded them and to link up with their new friends at the construction site.  
_Deus_ flickered back online, and it only took the lynx a moment to realise exactly how effective her attack had been.

Only a moment, before an errant clutch of rockets sheared off her right wingtip.

The whole craft juddered and a klaxon began wailing in her digital ear, the damaged section sending out a bright plume of smoke before dying way to wisps trailing into the air, and as she glanced down at the chassis monitor she realised just how close that hit had been.

In the moment the disruptive influence of the jamming field was down, one squadron of the forty-twos ahead of her had found the aim to get a lock on the ship, and fire before it activated and burnt them out. Flying blind while the Thundershock did its work, Nicole hadn't seen them coming…not until it was too late. The damage wasn't anything major – the wingtips didn't house anything particularly crucial, so aside from a slight yaw in trajectory she could fly and fight just fine. The problem was that now one of the fuel cells powering the engines was almost exposed. _Deus_ relied on its speed and low odds of taking a hit to stay alive in the air, and another hit on a location like that could see the engines explode, with clear consequences.

She couldn't let that happen – right now, Nicole was on this ship; Nicole _was_ this ship. If it went down, she went down with it.

"Sorry guys, I'm pulling out." She breathed heavily. "I took a hit while the field was down and I can't safely take another."

"What happened?" Amy queried, her voice showing a trace of concern for the first time in the battle.  
"Exposed fuel cell – they locked on while the field was down. I'm going to wheel back to Knothole and see if I can make repairs. My Onslaughts should act under defensive protocol and I've redirected some help your way." The ship held its current course for a moment and then swung away abruptly, dropping out of the fleet to skim along above the treeline. "A handful of the forty-twos like you now."

"Solid copy, Nicky." Sonic chirped.

"Sonic, don't get yourself killed. I want to hit you for that, when you get back." The AI smiled to herself. That nickname pulled a nerve every time he said it, but it proved he was still in fairly good spirits.

"Deal." He replied as the ship above roared away, back to Knothole, leaving the tiny squad of Freedom Fighters to fend off some of Robotnik's best. These robots weren't the absolute pinnacle of his power, of course – those were reserved for the unique, specialist robots like Metal Sonic. Even so, two legions would prove a force to be reckoned with. Yet, none of them could shake the question – why would Robotnik expend so much on a listening post? He was bringing some of his heaviest to this one place, and it may be yet another plan to discover Knothole, but things didn't add up. All this work for some observation post…

"Sonic, wreck the place." Amy's voice cut through the tense silence suddenly, coming clearly through the comm unit strapped to his HUD.

"Wait- what?" The words made him jump with such a sudden change in mood.

"It doesn't take a genius to work out whatever this is, Veracity got it wrong. Robotnik has some weird shit going on in his head, but even you should be able to work out that he's not going to throw all this at us just to defend a watch post. Tails could probably work out what it is, even Nicole could if she wanted but it isn't an observation post. Just break it all so we can leave without worrying about him building anything."

"I get the point. Reckon we have time?"

"Well, if you get started now you'll be half-done before they get there, and who's going to stop you wrecking the place while you're destroying the robots?"

_"Both of you sort this place out."_ Once again, Telera's fake voice cut through to them. _"I'm probably the only one here who isn't equipped for proper demolitions."_

"You think you can handle the legions alone?" Sonic's reply came, concern on the edge of his voice. He really had changed.

_"Sonic, here's a game plan for you. I've got Nicole's Onslaught unit and a few of the forty-twos. I can't give you all the time in the world, but I can slow 'em down long enough for you two to damage this place beyond repair. We've got lots of fast-movers and lots of cover. Shouldn't be hard to do some hit and run on the eighteens. I've got a few old tricks I reckon I can use. Just don't hang me out to dry, either of you."_

"You haven't faced eighteens before, have you?"

_"Once, when you guys found me. Been on the same battlefield before yeah, but usually you or Tails have taken care of them. Don't worry Sonic – I don't forget an image like those easily. I know what they look like and I know how to beat them. They've got strength and numbers. We've got speed, mother nature and the fact I'm not trying to win – just hold them up until you're done. Now go on you two, get started, or you won't finish in time."_

Telera didn't wait for a reply. Closing her link, the tigress allowed herself a shivering breath as the enormity of what she was doing hit her. She was right about the advantages, but she wasn't a strategist like Sally or Tails, and she'd never orchestrated the plans she knew before – that was one fact she'd carefully avoided. She'd been part of them before, but never leading them.

Still, she had a suit and a pistol, they had a hammer made of Megatal…and Sonic. All said and done, they'd do the job faster without her interfering. While Nicole was taking care of things, Telera was the closest to a strategist the three of them had, with Sonic being too headstrong and Amy being…Amy.  
Holstering the pistol, she craned her neck skyward. Already, the transports were beginning their descent, some hundred meters away in the forest. It'd be a close run thing to be sure, but she could do it. She had all the help she needed, and she could do it.

_"This is Telera the Tigress, taking command of all Freedom Fighter and Steel Legion units in the area."_ She thought, her lips mouthing the words as the display fixed to her face sent the message out. _"Cease current operations and deploy in crescent pattern centred on my signal. Minimum split distance, one-hundred yards. Support is forthcoming – standby for further orders."_


End file.
